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Docs: explain off-site vs. OCF hosting #56

Open matthew-mcallister opened 9 years ago

matthew-mcallister commented 9 years ago

A common question, brought up in rt#3973. Should probably distinguish free vs. proprietary software, off-site vs. on-site, web software versus web hosting service (and how the latter two are often intentionally muddled up). Also give a somewhat more complete list of available software.

hexecute commented 9 years ago

free vs. proprietary software

Do we really need to do that here? I think that might just make people angry without any benefits (e.g. "We can't use X because of OCF's political views?!"). Instead, we could approach it as a requirement of the university for security purposes which is more accurate (I think?) and keeps us in good graces.

kpengboy commented 9 years ago

Or cut to the chase and explain that it is not physically possible for us to host Wix etc. sites? On Oct 5, 2015 6:13 PM, "Peter Wu" notifications@github.com wrote:

free vs. proprietary software

Do we really need to do that here? I think that might just make people angry without any benefits (e.g. "We can't use X because of OCF's political views?"). Instead, we could approach it as a requirement of the university for security purposes which is more accurate (I think?).

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/ocf/ocfweb/issues/56#issuecomment-145715179.

matthew-mcallister commented 9 years ago

I definitely don't recommend posting an entire Stallman article. It should be clear why we cannot host a Wix website. Example:

Many "website builder" style services, such as Wix and Weebly, use a proprietary software backend owned by their companies. The OCF doesn't have the right or ability to transfer any website made with those services to our servers, so we cannot host them on-site. On the other hand, we can run anything using free and open-source software, like WordPress and Rails, so make your website with those!

nattofriends commented 9 years ago

No. This is not about free software. Make it abundantly clear that what Wix asks people to do is not OCF hosting a site, it is OCF pointing signs to Wix hosting the site themselves. It is due to University rules that we cannot do this.

Then proceed to describe the possible solutions, such as submitting an offsite request, or using free software hosted on the OCF.

On Monday, October 5, 2015, Matthew McAllister notifications@github.com wrote:

I definitely don't recommend posting an entire Stallman article. It should be clear why we cannot host a Wix website. Example:

Many "website builder" style services, such as Wix, Weebly, use a proprietary software backend owned by their companies. The OCF doesn't have the right or ability to transfer any website made with those services to our servers, so we cannot host them on-site. On the other hand, we can run anything using free and open-source software, like WordPress and Rails, so make your website with those!

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/ocf/ocfweb/issues/56#issuecomment-145729822.

matthew-mcallister commented 9 years ago

I agree, which is why I didn't say anything about the merits/demerits of free/proprietary software. However, a user might rightly wonder "Why isn't there a way to copy my Wix website over to the OCF servers?" After all, you can move from WordPress.com to WordPress on the OCF.

It sounds like you're referring to some specific user support page on Wix which tells people to ask for DNS to point to Wix. Yes, we should explicitly warn people that we cannot do that. If it needs to say more explicitly "No, we cannot give you offsite DNS nor can we copy your Wix website to our servers", then so be it. But it deserves at least a one-sentence explanation.

nattofriends commented 9 years ago

Sure, that makes sense. I will add that Wordpress and Tumblr also have CNAME handling support, so it isn't limited to just Wix.

2015-10-05 20:19 GMT-07:00 Matthew McAllister notifications@github.com:

I agree, which is why I didn't say anything about the merits/demerits of free/proprietary software. However, a user might rightly wonder "Why isn't there a way to copy my Wix website over to the OCF servers?" After all, you can move from WordPress.com to WordPress on the OCF.

It sounds like you're referring to some specific user support page on Wix which tells people to ask for DNS to point to Wix. Yes, we should explicitly warn people that we cannot do that. If it needs to say more explicitly "No, we cannot give you offsite DNS nor can we copy your Wix website to our servers", then so be it. But it deserves at least a one-sentence explanation.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/ocf/ocfweb/issues/56#issuecomment-145731064.