It's funny how clueless comments here are focused almost entirely on the matter of non-triviality, which is completely unrelated to the point of this project. Triviality heuristics are in fact only an implementation detail, something made to make the usage of this extension a bit more bearable. It could be completely missing and the gist of this extension would still be preserved - that is, ensuring that no proprietary code gets executed in the browser.
GNU LibreJS
31–40 of 74 posts
Re: GNU LibreJS
#32"It blocks..."
ah yes, freedom
Re: GNU LibreJS
#33While the comments here are almost universally negative, this actually isn't that bad of an idea. Not just because of the freedom aspect, though I'm generally fairly principled about that--I'm more concerned about security and tracking. I've been increasingly paranoid in the post-Snowden era about this kind of stuff, using NoScript, RequestPolicy, and other plugins. And guess what... it's a huge pain in the ass. So m…
I, for one, am growing tired of the entire "Libre + something" nomenclature.
Re: GNU LibreJS
#34For the curious, this is what is considered "non-trivial": .it makes an AJAX request or is loaded along with scripts that make an AJAX request, .it loads external scripts dynamically or is loaded along with scripts that do, .it defines functions or methods and either loads an external script (from html) or is loaded as one, .it uses dynamic JavaScript constructs that are difficult to analyze without interpreting the…
And how would you define the "non-triviality" of JS code?
Actually, you can omit that completely. This extension does not need any triviality heuristics to do what it is meant to do. If it does it - it does it only to make life of its users a bit easier.
It's not about blocking non-trivial scripts. It's about allowing trivial scripts even if they're not explicitly marked as free.
Re: GNU LibreJS
#35NB: I saw LibreJS in use months ago, in person at the FSF offices. I also got in an argument about it in which I brought up points that are echoed in comments on this page.
But, I was missing the point then. (Maybe I still am.)
I think the point of this thing is show web users a truth that they might not have thought about: that most javascript in the wild isn't licensed at all && they depend heavily on it.
To see this point clearly, try an experiment: install and activate the add-in. Now, try to do something on the web. Find a restaurant, buy airline tickets, comment on a post, author a post on your blog. Most likely, you can't do any of those things. That's the point. Even ardent free software supporters are depending on [large number] lines of non-free software every day.
Re: GNU LibreJS
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
People who care more about freedom than comfort?
People who care more about the delusional ranting of Stallman than actually using any web service today? Oh yeah, using jquery is "non-trivial". What a load of crap.
Stallman talking about the web is like a Catholic priest talking about sexual intercourse: he has no practical experience with it and has no idea what he's talking about.
Re: GNU LibreJS
#37While the comments here are almost universally negative, this actually isn't that bad of an idea. Not just because of the freedom aspect, though I'm generally fairly principled about that--I'm more concerned about security and tracking. I've been increasingly paranoid in the post-Snowden era about this kind of stuff, using NoScript, RequestPolicy, and other plugins. And guess what... it's a huge pain in the ass. So m…
I, for one, am growing tired of the entire "Libre + something" nomenclature.
Great. But why are you saying this in thread about something completely unrelated?
It's hardly "redoing an existing project". It's about giving user control on what he/she executes on his/her machine. It's just NoScript with automatic whitelisting of free software, nothing more.
Re: GNU LibreJS
#38This is self-imposed, owner-initiated DRM: it's software specifically to make your computer run fewer programs and be less useful, because it might hurt the owner to come to rely upon powerful non-free programs.
Right, just like Debian. Nobody uses that.
Re: GNU LibreJS
#39Classic GNU/Stallman. Putting ideology ahead of actually accomplishing anything. Thankfully, less than 1000 people will ever use this.
It is not evil to make proprietary software.
Re: GNU LibreJS
#40Blocking "nontrivial JavaScript"?! You have got to be kidding me. Let's block Linux kernel for "nontrivial C" while we at it. It sure as hell looks far more nontrivial than an average js script.
I see what they did now. They're not blocking any nontrivial JavaScript altogether. They're blocking nontrivial JavaScript insofar as it's unlicensed, or not licensed with a free license. So your trivial, unlicensed javascript can be allowed to run, but once you cross the heuristic threshold of non-triviality they've applied, you need to have a license so the user is sure they're not using some complex, non-free thin…
Ok, let's assume for a moment that we want to stick to the idea that programs ought to be readable/comprehensible by the user, thus "trivial" in a sense. But who decides on "nontriviality"? How did they come up with those heuristics? I can hardly find any nontrivial js code with my years of experience in it (except some jsfuck perhaps), yet at the same time I see every other day someone coming from .NET/Java land crying about all the wtf's of js. So how do we decide what is trivial and what's not?