
Using Dropbox as a Host for Static Websites. - alexandros
http://andothernoise.blogspot.com/2009/05/using-dropbox-as-host-for-static.html
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umbrae
For a less TOS breaking solution, you could set up a dropbox client on your
server and let it refresh your web content automatically. You're hosting it
yourself, but you still get the benefit of no file transferring necessary.

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chaosmachine
I might be wrong, but this probably violates the terms of service if you're
serving pages to more than a few visitors.

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teej
Yeah, using DropBox as a faux-CDN is a bad idea. To quote their terms:

> By placing Your Files in your public folder, you hereby grant all other
> Dropbox users and the public a non-exclusive, non-commercial, worldwide,
> royalty-free, sublicensable, perpetual and irrevocable right and license to
> use and exploit Your Files in your public folder

But having your DropBox "repository" as your web root seems pretty slick.

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chops
While that sounds perfectly reasonable to me, I wonder if it's that
enforceable? That sounds like the public domain to me. Can a company declare
"by doing X on our system, you hereby release your IP into the public domain?"

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ajkirwin
Sure they can. And you then have the choice NOT to use it.

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ryanwaggoner
Please see: <http://mattmaroon.com/2009/05/01/hacker-news-disease/>

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ajkirwin
I'm sorry, but what the hell does that have to do with my comment that a
company can make you agree to licencing terms to use their product?

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ryanwaggoner
I read the question as being: is it legally enforceable for a company to have
in their TOS that you release your IP into the public domain if you do X on
their platform?

Are you an IP attorney or in any way qualified to answer that question? Matt's
post was about people on HN answering questions that they are in no way
qualified to answer, just because they're intelligent in some other unrelated
area. Your post seemed like a perfect example.

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ajkirwin
I would say you could easily draw a paralell between this and companies
including GPL software (and their ilk) and such into products, who are then
forced to comply with the licencing terms and make entire source codes
available.

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wheels
Not necissarily. You can't write something into a contract that's not legal
and still have that clause be enforceable. Stuff that's not legally
enforceable is written into contracts all of the time. The question was
whether or not this is one such clause, and the point of this sub-thread was
that none of us seem to actually know the answer to that.

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artlogic
This isn't really news:

<http://wiki.getdropbox.com/TipsAndTricks/HostWebsites>

Dropbox itself has been suggesting you do this since at least mid-march, if
not earlier. I wouldn't use it for your business' website, but it would
probably be great for sharing information/photos/videos amongst friends.

A more interesting idea is mentioned here:

[http://wiki.getdropbox.com/TipsAndTricks/WebPublishingSoluti...](http://wiki.getdropbox.com/TipsAndTricks/WebPublishingSolution)

This basically suggests using Dropbox to manage publishing and basic version
control of a web application's source code. I will definitely be using this as
soon as selective synching is enabled (hopefully soon - hint hint).

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buugs
I don't know if they still do this but in the past dropbox did close down
public transfers for people who overused or misused it (probably more a
bandwidth issue such as sharing large videos).

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albertni
I don't want to get into the details (for obvious reasons) but we are quite
lenient about public link usage! We're mostly interested in cutting off the
potentially expensive long tail, which can get very, very long.

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zacharypinter
I set my homepage to TiddlyWiki that's stored on Dropbox via a file:// link.
The two are a fairly powerful and convenient combo.

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kierank
I'm guessing (as with Amazon S3) it's not possible to host a root file - hence
<http://dl.dropbox.com/xxxx/whatever> won't work.

