> Maybe *.small-web.com is an intermediate step that is useful. I pondered this before first posting, and decided that although I’m sympathetic to the reasonin

> Maybe *.small-web.com is an intermediate step that is useful. I pondered this before first posting, and decided that although I’m sympathetic to the reasoning I believe it’s a grave error of judgement, and that they should force people to use their own domains. Not only does it undermine their stated goals, but it makes them as a company or foundation more likely to fail since providing a domain will lead to significant abuse of their service if they offer any free service at all, including trial periods. (Newcomers to these sorts of industries tend to be surprised at how all-pervasive and varied abuse is, even of small players.) Requiring that people provide a domain would certainly turn away some potential customers/users that would perhaps have finished the job and moved to a domain of their own later, but it would also vastly reduce the burden of abuse. And so I decided to use the word “must”, italicised, for practical reasons as well as ideological. In their first phase, they’re even targeting tech-savvy people, who are less likely to “need” *.small-web.com.