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GNU LibreJS

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Re: GNU LibreJS

#91
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is that you're likely to get a lot of false negatives. For your browser to remain usable after installing this, you'll pretty much have to add every new site you visit to your whitelist. This convention will only work if everyone follows it. And very few will because it's aiming to solve a problem that doesn't exist.

>This convention will only work if everyone follows it. Just like original FOSS licenses started out then? What's the problem? People who care will start to follow it and if it turns out to be a good idea (like how the original GPL & similar licenses came to being into a mostly proprietary licensed world) people will follow.

Except with most FOSS licenses, the application of the license has a direct and practical impact: You can hack on it yourself.

The problem is that Javascript is already like that (obfuscated or otherwise). I can step through even the crappiest JS obfuscation with a debugger and, say, find out if it's working against me. Or tracking me. Or whatever.

The license header stuff serves no purpose but to appease the paranoia of a subset of a microscopic subset of users who would not visit a website, on principle alone, because of the "freeness" of its javascript.

And this is not a slam against those users, it's a simple fact of numbers. Even with the most liberal possible estimates of how many of those users exist, and the most conservative estimate of what my theoretical engineers are getting paid, it doesn't make sense to bother with this.

Re: GNU LibreJS

#92
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I attended an RMS lecture about free software and the GNU movement. To me, RMS just seems to be too paranoid about "non-free" software to the point that it just seems impractical. He spoke about LibreJS and about why we should complain, but I wasn't really convinced due to the exact same reason you mentioned.

RMS takes the polar opposite position to proprietary software. Is his viewpoint always practical; maybe, maybe not. But by creating such polar opposite he gives space for a lot more "lessor" free, more practical solutions and options. So he plays a very important guardian kind of role; which a lot of people will chalk up to paranoia.

It's still paranoia at the end of the day. Consistent paranoia, thoughtful paranoia, but still, ultimately, paranoia.

I think what bothers people about Stallman (or at least, what bothers me about him, and extrapolating) is that he takes a moralistic approach. Non free software isn't a non optimal thing to be fixed for well-thought-out reasons X, Y, and Z, it is an Evil, and you are Wrong for perpetuating it.

Re: GNU LibreJS

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to be fair, internally we're currently using Slack. We'll be switching to Rocket Chat next week (right before we all fly to Austin to meet everyone face-to-face, so God help us there if stuff breaks). I'm relatively new, so I don't know what happened with Mattermost. I also haven't been following what we're intending to ship with in future versions, it could be both or just one, but don't quote me on that.

Has your team looked into http://matrix.org/ ? I looked into rocket chat before finding matrix and I found it covered my needs better.

You post a lot about matrix.org. Are you involved with it, or just a happy user?

Re: GNU LibreJS

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to be fair, internally we're currently using Slack. We'll be switching to Rocket Chat next week (right before we all fly to Austin to meet everyone face-to-face, so God help us there if stuff breaks). I'm relatively new, so I don't know what happened with Mattermost. I also haven't been following what we're intending to ship with in future versions, it could be both or just one, but don't quote me on that.

Has your team looked into http://matrix.org/ ? I looked into rocket chat before finding matrix and I found it covered my needs better.

I'm not sure, like I said, I haven't been following along with this specifically :)

Re: GNU LibreJS

#95
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This convention will only work if everyone follows it. Just like original FOSS licenses started out then? What's the problem? People who care will start to follow it and if it turns out to be a good idea (like how the original GPL & similar licenses came to being into a mostly proprietary licensed world) people will follow.

Except with most FOSS licenses, the application of the license has a direct and practical impact: You can hack on it yourself. The problem is that Javascript is already like that (obfuscated or otherwise). I can step through even the crappiest JS obfuscation with a debugger and, say, find out if it's working against me. Or tracking me. Or whatever. The license header stuff serves no purpose but to appease the paranoi…

You can also reverse engineer code, sniff your network traffic, and lots of other things with proprietary software, but that doesn't make it free.

Also, there _is_ a practical impact on the JS you see on a particular site: the fact that you can debug it doesn't mean you can change and redistribute it.

There are very real implications of having a piece of code released under a particular license and it's hardly accurate to call these implications "paranoia".

Re: GNU LibreJS

#96
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point, that I didn't articulate well, is that over time everything is going to be computing . Some day your pants will have a CPU in it. Do you not have control over your life if proprietary pants software cools your legs when it's hot? So it seems that the definition of "what is software" has to constantly be redefined OR the whole Free Software thing becomes more and more a luddite idea.

> Do you not have control over your life if proprietary pants software cools your legs when it's hot? Do you have the source code to firmware on the chip in the pants? Can you install a custom version? That would be consistent with the FSF's viewpoint. They want the user to have full access and control over the software he uses in all devices he uses.

To put a bit of a finer point on it: Stallman has said (paraphrasing; I'm having trouble finding a good source) that self-contained embedded firmware/microcode without an update mechanism isn't "software" in a sense relevant to the Free Software movement. Rather, it's equivalent to a hardwired state machine, and we can judge its behavior as a single object, notwithstanding what its architecture looks like internally.

Re: GNU LibreJS

#97

Classic case of GPL Nazism!! RMS was relevant in a world where Microsoft was a monopoly, arm-twisting the competition, including open source, into submission. But today, RMS despises all software that isn't GPL. He once argued for EMACS to not support LLVM/Clang as LLVM is licensed as (a more permissive) Apache-2. https://slashdot.org/story/15/02/08/210241/rms-objects-to-su...

you shouldn't use terms like "Nazism" so loosely. It makes it lose its denotative and connotative value. If you do, then what words will you have at your disposal if the real thing comes around? Unless RMS is leveraging nationalism through racist policies and wants a strong police state or thinks mercantilism should replace capitalism, it's really not a very good label - save that for the real thing.

Certainly a hyperbole to use the said term. Nonetheless, from RMS' recent commentaries, it does seem like for software, he wants to replace capitalism with socialism. Like cited in the Slashdot link in my previous comment, he's gone so far as to demonize free software that isn't GPL.

Re: GNU LibreJS

#98

Classic case of GPL Nazism!! RMS was relevant in a world where Microsoft was a monopoly, arm-twisting the competition, including open source, into submission. But today, RMS despises all software that isn't GPL. He once argued for EMACS to not support LLVM/Clang as LLVM is licensed as (a more permissive) Apache-2. https://slashdot.org/story/15/02/08/210241/rms-objects-to-su...

you shouldn't use terms like "Nazism" so loosely. It makes it lose its denotative and connotative value. If you do, then what words will you have at your disposal if the real thing comes around? Unless RMS is leveraging nationalism through racist policies and wants a strong police state or thinks mercantilism should replace capitalism, it's really not a very good label - save that for the real thing.

[deleted]

Re: GNU LibreJS

#99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you not have control over your life if proprietary pants software cools your legs when it's hot? Do you have the source code to firmware on the chip in the pants? Can you install a custom version? That would be consistent with the FSF's viewpoint. They want the user to have full access and control over the software he uses in all devices he uses.

To put a bit of a finer point on it: Stallman has said (paraphrasing; I'm having trouble finding a good source) that self-contained embedded firmware/microcode without an update mechanism isn't "software" in a sense relevant to the Free Software movement. Rather, it's equivalent to a hardwired state machine, and we can judge its behavior as a single object, notwithstanding what its architecture looks like internally.

When did he say this? In the 80s when he established the FSF or recently when the issue came up? This is my entire point, over time the definition of "software" has to be re-evaluated to justify the existence of this ethos; if one man defines what is "software" under this philosophy it doesn't feel like a real philosophy at all.

Re: GNU LibreJS

#100
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point, that I didn't articulate well, is that over time everything is going to be computing . Some day your pants will have a CPU in it. Do you not have control over your life if proprietary pants software cools your legs when it's hot? So it seems that the definition of "what is software" has to constantly be redefined OR the whole Free Software thing becomes more and more a luddite idea.

> Do you not have control over your life if proprietary pants software cools your legs when it's hot? Do you have the source code to firmware on the chip in the pants? Can you install a custom version? That would be consistent with the FSF's viewpoint. They want the user to have full access and control over the software he uses in all devices he uses.

Over time this will be unsurmountable; you'll not have the time to audit everything you contact (it all can be software and you not even know it). The only solution is to live an isolationist lifestyle.
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