Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Javascript Trap

gnu.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 117 posts

Re: The Javascript Trap

#71

Post by jodrellblank »

bmj wrote: post #68
critic wrote: post #7

RMS is complaining about Obfuscript. Speaking of obfuscation, I hope someone would deobfuscate LGPL for me.

Yeah, and I'm not sure I follow this (the Obfuscript bit). You _do_ have the source code, albeit a bit difficult to read. I'm guessing there are plenty of GPL'ed programs out there with horrible style and horrible documentation.

Difficult to read or not, there's not much point because you don't have the legal permission to change it, contribute to it, derive code from it, etc.

We have the right to improve GPL'd programs with horrible documentation.

Re: The Javascript Trap

#72

Post by jodrellblank »

axod wrote: post #53
jrockway wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, but we already do this. I block all ads, which means I'm modifying your app to not make any money off of me. Such is the reality of the Internet and general purpose computers.

No, you just think you block ads. It's extremely naive to think you actually block all ads. I'm sure a lot of people have made money out of you online from advertising you don't recognize as advertising. edit: Sure, downvote me if you like. If you like to think adblock etc actually block all adverts I guess it's up to you. It blocks a small class of 'obvious adverts'. Several websites will pass outgoing links through…

That's fine. I use flashblock and adblock to block annoying flashing animated noisy colourful page disrupting ads, to block ads and ad servers tracking me and giving them power and commercial gain with no gain to me, and to stop FireFox playing noise from background tabs I can't find quickly.

I don't do it to stop site owners 'making' money from me. If you can get non-annoying ads to me, and make money from me, that's brilliant. If that's all anyone did, I'd get rid of *block altogether.

Re: The Javascript Trap

#73

Post by critic »

mjgoins wrote: post #42
critic wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like a web developer arguing that all software should be free, except web apps. In my opinion, all software should be free, when all groceries are free.

Groceries are (usually) free, meaning if you buy an apple, you're legally allowed to use it to grow yourself an apple tree. I assume you didn't mean free in some other way, right?

But your planting of a tree doesn't automatically prevent the farmer you bought the apple from from making any money.

If I have to release my code under GPL, I can't make money charging thousands for it (low volume type of app). If I can't make money from it, I won't spend years developing it. Not having the app would make it harder for some pharma scientist somewhere to cure cancer. Everyone loses. Communism doesn't work.

Re: The Javascript Trap

#74

Post by jodrellblank »

critic wrote: post #4
hank777 wrote: post #3

what a whacko. I should allow you to access my servers and services for free? I should allow you to control how you use my resources in a way that guarantees I loose money? Stallman is a digital socialist. The idea of services (or anything other than direct labor) that people charge for offends him. That offends me.

"communist"

"label"

Re: The Javascript Trap

#75

Post by azanar »

hymanroth wrote: post #32

Whilst respecting what Richard Stallman has achieved in the past, I just couldn't read his latest post on javascript without getting a bit hot under the collar. His position is, in my mind, completely untenable. He sees everything through his 'free software' glasses, the same way a dyed-in-the-wool communist sees everything through his Breznospecs. It's not enough for him that a Google Docs javascript file be free (g…

He sees everything through his 'free software' glasses, the same way a dyed-in-the-wool communist sees everything through his Breznospecs.

Just as a dyed-in-the-wool capitalist sees everything through their Smith-o-specs.

We have always lived in a world of complete economic reality, by obvious tautology. It is that economic reality that gave rise to the GPL and the Free Software Movement. These were market instruments made to route around other market instruments perceived as damaging or inefficient. That there is so much under the GPL right now suggests that there was real market damage or inefficiency being routed around. Just because there isn't money involved in this doesn't mean there isn't a market involved. This market just happens to trade in something other than money; you seem to see something wrong with that.

I think I see why, as well. These people, who will work on software for free -- for hacker kudos -- are perceived as a threat to those who would work on that same software for money. They are not forced, they chose to, but it still means market forces threaten to drive the salary of a developer down. You think this will drive hackers into economic poverty. If anything, it has had the opposite effect. The software people release for free earns them a reputation that allows them to later release other software for a very handsome profit.

The open software movement cares more about its users than it does its developers.

The movement is very little apart from the developers, so this reduces down to the developers caring more about the users than they do about themselves. Are they being too altruistic? I don't know. If they are, they'll soon find themselves being less altruistic out of need. If not, I don't see why we need to cast aspersions their way. They choose to work this way.

As for threatening the livelihood of programming work-for-pay, it isn't. There are still problems out there that you would need to pay people to work on, partly because they haven't forgotten about their rent in all of this, and partly because there just isn't that intrinsic motivation for some of the software people need written.

Re: The Javascript Trap

#76

Post by mattchew »

mattmaroon wrote: post #29
dasil003 wrote: post #13

RMS is awesome. The fact that he's out there fighting the good fight every day so I don't have to is incredible. We all owe him a lot, and we should demonstrate that by contributing back to open source as much as we can. That said, I think he's totally out of his league on the software as a service model. At the very least he needs to spend a lot more time mulling it over. As far as I see it, freeness of javascript m…

That's bullshit. He's not fighting any good fight, and even if he were, he's doing it in a way (very much like PETA) that makes sure he's seen as an unpalatable nutjob by any sane individual. His own extremism will prevent him from accomplishing anything.

Being an articulate advocate for an extreme position is an accomplishment all by itself. It opens people's minds. It makes people smarter.

I think RMS's positions are extreme. I don't share most of his views, including his latest concern about javascript. But I admire the man for knowing his own mind and speaking for his beliefs directly and honestly. You don't get mealy-mouthed bullshit from RMS. No evasions, no fog-of-words, no equivocations. I love him for that.

Also, he is more right than I once thought. When I first read "Right To Read" I thought it was ridiculous, extremist, absurd. Well, after seeing what "they" have tried to do with DRM, I was wrong. I think we are still a long way from that dystopia, and the momentum (right now at least) is in the right direction. But he saw something I didn't, and I try not to forget it when reading other things of his I don't agree with.

Re: The Javascript Trap

#77

Post by dasil003 »

critic wrote: post #73
mjgoins wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Groceries are (usually) free, meaning if you buy an apple, you're legally allowed to use it to grow yourself an apple tree. I assume you didn't mean free in some other way, right?

But your planting of a tree doesn't automatically prevent the farmer you bought the apple from from making any money. If I have to release my code under GPL, I can't make money charging thousands for it (low volume type of app). If I can't make money from it, I won't spend years developing it. Not having the app would make it harder for some pharma scientist somewhere to cure cancer. Everyone loses. Communism doesn't…

You are not forced to release your code under the GPL. You can spend years developing it and release it however you want.

However if you choose to release under the GPL you will be standing on the shoulders of giants. You will have whole new avenues of development opportunity opened up to you as a result.

"Communism" does work in the sense of the Linux ecosystem that you see around you every day. Not only that, but companies like Microsoft are forced to innovate because open source eventually catched up to them. Without free software all software would be tied up in a morass of patents and licensing fees. Progress would have ground to a halt, and we would wait with baited breath to pay $500 for the latest version of Windows crafted upon their latest business model to coerce upgrades from all their regular customers.

If you are adding 1000 man hours on top of 50,000 man hours of development that you are getting for free, is it moral for you to give nothing back? The GPL is simply a way for the contributors of the 50,000 hours to say that you can use their code if you share in return. It's not clear at all why you think you should be entitled to that code.

Re: The Javascript Trap

#78

Post by etal »

azanar wrote: post #36

Apart from the political squabbling, the feasibility of implementing something that "detects" JavaScript released under a free-as-in-freedom license seems tricky and error prone. The suggestion in the article that you put a license delimiter and then parse the text of the license seems error prone; not because the license is particular difficult text to parse, but because text parsing in general is a rather fussy and…

Well, it could be treated similarly to version numbers in code. Once a given JS file is loaded, whatever __LICENSE__ evaluates to (e.g.), that's the program's stated license. If that global variable isn't set, then you know you can't assume anything about the code.

Re: The Javascript Trap

#79

Post by tlrobinson »

mjgoins wrote: post #42
critic wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like a web developer arguing that all software should be free, except web apps. In my opinion, all software should be free, when all groceries are free.

Groceries are (usually) free, meaning if you buy an apple, you're legally allowed to use it to grow yourself an apple tree. I assume you didn't mean free in some other way, right?

Unless the apple was grown from Monsanto seeds... http://www.mindfully.org/GE/2003/Monsanto-Reaps-Anger12may03...

Re: The Javascript Trap

#80

Post by dasil003 »

azanar wrote: post #75
hymanroth wrote: post #32

Whilst respecting what Richard Stallman has achieved in the past, I just couldn't read his latest post on javascript without getting a bit hot under the collar. His position is, in my mind, completely untenable. He sees everything through his 'free software' glasses, the same way a dyed-in-the-wool communist sees everything through his Breznospecs. It's not enough for him that a Google Docs javascript file be free (g…

He sees everything through his 'free software' glasses, the same way a dyed-in-the-wool communist sees everything through his Breznospecs. Just as a dyed-in-the-wool capitalist sees everything through their Smith-o-specs. We have always lived in a world of complete economic reality, by obvious tautology. It is that economic reality that gave rise to the GPL and the Free Software Movement. These were market instrument…

There also seems to be some sort of underlying belief that software is a zero-sum game. That every piece of free software is taking money out of someone's pocket.

The problem with that belief is that every piece of free software makes it possible to build more valuable new things on top of it for cheaper. Software is additive in a way that no other prior asset has been.

As such, the value of free software is tremendous, almost incalculable. At every step somebody bemoans that the GPL is preventing them from grabbing free software and turning it into an incredibly profitable proprietary product. They quickly point to the lost potential revenue, and completely ignore the value that would be lost by the free software being supplanted by a proprietary product.

What if Red Hat had forked Linux to a proprietary model 10 years ago and done enough to become the standard. Do you think they could have delivered as much as the entire community has done since then?

Post reply on HN