> Can I host my Outstatic website on a provider other than Vercel?
> We specified Vercel on the documentation as it is the only platform we've tried Outstatic on.
I don't see why it wouldn't work on other platforms such as Netlify or your own preferred setup.
Doesn't seem like deploy is baked into the library, it's just in the documentation as an example (a bit misleading and had to read the FAQ to figure this out). They are helping you setup Vercel's "deploy" from github that's available to any github repo, not specific to Outstatic CMS. You can setup a Github action to deploy anywhere you want.
As many people here have mentioned in this thread, Netlify CMS was a big player in this space but has since been abandoned. If a project like that, backed by a company with resources, can get abandoned so easily, it doesn't give me confidence that a self-proclaimed side-project will have longevity.
Seeing that Github is exploiting FOSS for its own commercial interests and possibly violating licenses (Copilot), it's not exactly the kind of ownership that I envision when somebody says "own your data".
Don't know much about Vercel, but I'd be skeptical.
I think it'd be an improvement over this project to make those dependencies optional. For example, if I wanted to self-host. I'm using NetlifyCMS for a project and I agree with others that the whole space could use a bit of innovation.
In my opinion, code I add to Github is still mine. Guess we'll have to agree to disagree here.
Self-hosting would be awesome indeed, but I think doing it would be quite complicated because of the authentication part, which is needed to push changes to a git provider.
NetlifyCMS allows you to define your own backends, and Gitea now has OAuth2 support. Should be able to adopt a similar strategy and allow Gitea to be used as a backend.
Is it (a) "Your Content", (b) all the data that Github gets from hosting "Your Content" or (c) both.
With respect to people who upload data to Github, under the Github Terms of Service,^1 specifically the license that these people grant to Github, there is almost nothing that Github cannot do with "Your Content".^2^3
Anything that falls under "applications, software, products and services" is fair game. If the product is [whatever], they have granted Github a license to use their content for it. If the service is [whatever], they have granted Github a license to use their content for it. No one knows what products or services Microsoft may choose to pursue through Github in the future.
2. The one potential prohibition is the sale of "Your Content." But, as in the case of Facebook, it would make little sense to sell user generated content. It is the company's largest asset. Of course, nothing prohibits Github from giving away or otherwise transferring Your Content to a third party, not as part of a sale. As long as this activity is part of "applications, software, products or services" offered by Github, it is permitted. As above, that could be anything, and we have no way to predict what Microsoft may choose to do in the future.
3. However Github is explicitly permitted to transfer "Your Content" to "partners" such as
Internet Archive
Software Heritage
The Long Now
piql
Stanford University
Bodleian Libraries
GH Torrent
GH Archive
Microsoft Research
Bibliotheca-Alexandrina
We have no idea what if any terms Github requires of its partners with respect to "Your Content".
You may have no direct relationship with those partners and thus no means of limiting what they can do with "Your Content".
To be truthful, some of those partners may have fewer commercial incentives than Microsoft, hence the risk of objectionable uses may be lower. But then we are left wondering why Microsoft needs to be an intermediary between the content owners and the "partners" who can store Your Content for future generations, at no cost to you, e.g., Internet Archive.
No doubt, by acting as an (unnecessary) intermediary, sitting in between "Your Content" and anyone who wishes to access it, Microsoft is collecting and generating vast amounts of data that fall outside of "Your Content". Obviously, this data is outside of your control. Do you "own" it.
Interesting. Thanks for the info. Ownership of data can be tricky, if you consider things like Google cache and the Internet Archive, then anything you make public on the internet isn't really yours.
Well, the RIAA would probably disagree the next time they issue a DMCA request. That's just not how copyright law works. Your opinion is not uncommon, though; I don't know why people adopt such a defeatist approach when corporations fuck us up.
But it seems to require a Github and a Vercel account: https://outstatic.com/docs/getting-started