[KomoD]

> This site is misrepresenting itself as open source and free

It's not.

They don't say that the site and all the services they offer are free and open-source, they say that the Archivarix CMS is free and open-source (GNU GPLv3), which it is...

> as you don't even download/run the software yourself

You can download the CMS.

> but as there's no way to self-host this, let alone download it and/or run it, for free or otherwise

Again yes you can both download it and self-host the CMS

> I think it's safe to avoid this scammy site.

It's scammy because they're not offering everything for free and open-source even though they never said they would?

https://archivarix.com/en/cms/

[aspenmayer]

Unless the CMS lets you backup/restore Internet Archive sites, then that is literally off-topic, beside the point, and doesn’t make sense given the context of ‘bagpuss’s comment. That ‘bagpuss was vague about what they said was free doesn’t change the context of the discussion.

I stand by what I said, as the Internet Archive feature, which is the entire point of OP’s post, is not free on their platform. The CMS is not relevant to this discussion.

It’s scammy because the kind of people who would use this wouldn’t know how many files are in the backup because they are likely no/low-context users who are likely not familiar with concepts like “average or expected number of files on a website.” The pricing is usurious and exploitative due to the pricing model being per file versus by file size for example.

[KomoD]

> then that is literally off-topic

It's not, you're claiming they said something they didn't.

> and doesn’t make sense given the context of ‘bagpuss’s comment. That ‘bagpuss was vague about what they said was free doesn’t change the context of the discussion.

I don't care about bagpuss's comment, they don't represent Archivarix as far as I can tell.

You said the site is misrepresenting itself, it's not.

You said the site is claiming things they haven't.

You called the site "scammy" based on something that they never even claimed.

> It’s scammy because the kind of people who would use this wouldn’t know how many files are in the backup

Archive.org tells you how many URLs are saved.

Example: https://web.archive.org/details/https://sweetcode.io

2109+4716+595+732+562+90+28+1+9+1 = 8843 unique URLs.

First file is free. First 1000 files are $0.01 each. Additional thousands are $1 per thousand.

So the price would be $17.84

[aspenmayer]

I was responding to ‘bagpuss because they made a claim that the site linked was respondent to OP, and was free. You and I can quibble about what they meant, but a plain reading of their comment implies that the functionality that OP asked for was free, because ‘bagpuss never mentioned the CMS, and in fact the CMS seems like a red herring in this discussion entirely.

I do feel that the site misrepresents the value proposition of the Internet Archive backup/restore service, because the site’s value proposition is convenience for users who don’t know that there are actually free, actually open source ways to backup and restore content from Internet Archive, and that site isn’t it. They’re banking on users not knowing any better in that case, which isn’t unethical per se, buyer beware etc, but it’s shady.

That above combined with the pricing model makes it scammy because you have to spend a minimum of $10 in crypto or other non-reversible payment for something that should not cost the user anything, as the Internet Archive is bearing the lion’s share of the costs. And if it doesn’t do what you needed, you’ve already paid in worthless credits.

https://archivarix.com/en/tutorial/#list-3

> Second example: the big site contains 25,520 files. From this quantity you can deduct 1 because they will be free of charge. So we have 25,519 paid files. First thousand will cost $10, and the rest 24,519 costs only $1 per thousand, therefore $24.519 . Full price for the big site recovery is $34.52!!!

$34.52 is not a reasonable price for this by any means.

That said, I make no claims about the site being respondent to OP’s request, as I’m not OP. I simply rejected the claims brought by ‘bagpuss.

[KomoD]

> but a plain reading of their comment implies that the functionality that OP asked for was free, because ‘bagpuss never mentioned the CMS, and in fact the CMS seems like a red herring in this discussion entirely.

What I'm saying is YOU said THE SITE was misrepresenting itself when THE SITE isn't. It would've been BAGPUSS that was misrepresenting THE SITE if anyone.

> for something that should not cost the user anything, as the Internet Archive is bearing the lion’s share of the costs.

It's still costing Archivarix money to run the service, yes you are paying for convenience, I see nothing wrong with that whatsoever.

Ideally the Internet Archive should provide an easy way to download sites but they don't.

> $34.52 is not a reasonable price for this by any means.

Why is it not reasonable? They spent time developing this service and it costs money to run, if you want to save money then yeah you can recover it yourself with some open-source software like wayback-machine-downloader, but some people just want to recover sites without having to bother with any of that.

[aspenmayer]

> What I'm saying is YOU said THE SITE was misrepresenting itself when THE SITE isn't. It would be BAGPUSS that was misrepresenting THE SITE.

Both of these things can be true, that ‘bagpuss was misrepresenting the site, and the site is intentionally vague as to what is free and what isn’t so as to muddy the waters and paint themselves as saviors and good people for being open source while overcharging for a product to the degree that the site misrepresents itself, and I believe that they both are true.

> Ideally the Internet Archive should provide an easy way to download sites but they don't.

I agree, but that’s not really relevant to our discussion or to ‘bagpuss’s claims.

And if IA did provide an easy way to do that, the site linked would be an even worse deal.

The site is misrepresenting itself as being worth paying for at any price.

Furthermore, you can download an entire site using your web browser ‘Save page as’ -> ‘web page, complete’ dialog in conjunction with the undocumented trick:

> This is undocumented, but if you retrieve a page with id_ after the datecode, you will get the unmodified original document without all the Wayback scripts, header stuff, and link rewriting.

Seems pretty easy to me, but only if you know how. Which is the only reason anyone would use that site - they simply don’t know how bad a deal the site is, or they have more dollars than sense.

[KomoD]

> and the site is intentionally vague as to what is free

It's not? It says the CMS is free and open-source and they have prices listed for the paid services they provide.

> and paint themselves as saviors and good people for being open source while overcharging for a product to the degree that the site misrepresents itself, and I believe that they both are true.

Simply saying that something is open-source is you painting yourself as a "savior"?

> And if IA did provide an easy way to do that, the site linked would be an even worse deal.

Obviously, if they did provide it then there would be no reason at all to pay.

> Furthermore, you can download an entire site using your web browser ‘Save page as’ -> ‘web page, complete’ dialog in conjunction with the undocumented trick:

No, not an entire site, just the current HTML document and the accompanying files for it (e.g. scripts, images, etc.) If you want to sit for hours manually doing that for thousands of pages then feel free.