RFC: Should we drop the entire rails backend in favor of a static site?

[zspencer]

At present, the application does not really seem to need a backend database; and moving to a ruby script that pulls the data and outputs a plain JSON file that can be fed into something like eleventy to render a plain site hosted using a service such as github pages would reduce the operating costs from ~$14/mo to $0.

However, having a Rails backend does give us more flexibility for adding useful features; like a "pledge" feature where people agree to work towards moving to an ethical license once one has been approved by the OSI or FSF and there is some amount of legal and operational support to facilitate the relicensing.

Thoughts anyone?

[CoralineAda]

100% in favor of making it more lightweight. For the pledge idea, we'd probably redirect to another dedicated site.

[nateberkopec]

Given that it's a Ruby-language backend already, wouldn't it make more sense to use Jekyll or a Ruby-language static generator?

[zspencer]

I am comfortable maintaining a static site generated using whatever generator an implementor chooses to use.

Jekyll is in a good steady-state, and I know enough about how it works to be dangerous (wrote a few plugins a few years back).