14 ms·

GNU LibreJS

213 points by sciurus 10y ago

DanielDent 10y ago
Just wait until they discover NaCL, PNaCL, ASM.js, and web assembly...
- rhinoceraptor 10y ago
  Or even just regular minification, or using a compile-to-js language that emits non-human readable JS.
  - Delmania 10y ago
    I could have sworn the "Javascript Trap" mentioned that issue, but I think the viewpoint is that minified JS is the compiled version. So long as you provide the raw files, it's fine.
- detaro 10y ago
  Why? Do you see Stallman objecting to people distributing binaries?
aaronbrethorst 10y ago
Apparently it adds a "Complain" tab to your browser when it detects offensive JavaScript: https://www.gnu.org/software/librejs/manual/librejs.html#Complaint-Feature https://www.gnu.org/software/librejs/manual/librejs.html#Com...
- striking 10y ago
  That's just what the world needs. More bikeshedding about "offensive JavaScript". Offensive JS includes: "It makes an AJAX request or is loaded along with scripts that make an AJAX request" and "Calling methods with the square bracket notation" and "Using any other construct than a string literal with certain methods (Obj.write, Obj.createElement, …)." If it includes something like the above (which 99% of HTML frameworks do) and it doesn't have a free license statement, should people really complain about it? Like, fine. Sure. You don't want to run non-free JS. Okay. But there's no reason to waste someone's time complaining about it, either. How is anyone supposed to take this seriously?
  - madeofpalk 10y ago
    > Calling methods with the square bracket notation > If it includes something like the above [...] and it doesn't have a free license statement, should people really complain about it? Why on earth would this project concern itself with the coding styles of the JS that the author prefers? Even if the site and/or JS is free software, why do things things matter? I mean, I get linting your own code, but linting the code of sites you visit just seems pointless. This, banning AJAX requests and with the arduous process of getting into the 'libre' whitelist, makes this project a complete joke.
    - drdaeman 10y ago
      Where do you guys see the prohibition? I've opened https://www.gnu.org/software/librejs/manual/librejs.html#index-javascript https://www.gnu.org/software/librejs/manual/librejs.html#ind... and see that having functions, doing AJAX requests, square brackets and the other stuff is what they use to distinguish between trivial JS code and non-trivial one. And it exactly makes sense - no one wants to stick a license over every trivial JS one-liner that's could be less of a program and more of configuration statements block. But those who care about free software don't want to run non-free programs. So, the heuristics. But I really can't find anything like a ban on use of functions or AJAX requests, or something similarly ridiculous, that some comments here seem to imply. Seriously, WTF?
  - s4chin 10y ago
    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.
    - alfonsodev 10y ago
      He usually says that we give up freedom in exchange of convenience. For example Facebook is convenient so, who cares about privacy ? I don't use LibreJS or plan to use it either, but I think his points are valid theoretically, implement them in our society is pretty hard but my point is, these libre tools being "impractical" doesn't invalidate the philosophical idea behind. I'd would call him idealist rather than a paranoid.
- elcapitan 10y ago
  "Offensive Javascript" is great Newspeak. So in addition to being sandboxed it should also be "safespaced"?
- justinlardinois 10y ago
  > LibreJS includes a default subject line and body for the complaint email, with a link to the JavaScript Trap essay. If that's not some pedantic RMS bullshit, I don't know what is. At least it's easy enough for a spam filter to catch.
  - matt4077 10y ago
    Funny enough, that spam filter was probably written in emacs, compiled with gcc & make and GPL-licenced :)
  - drdaeman 10y ago
    Either I really didn't get your comment, or you just wanted to call rms names, or you want to say that users shouldn't care about the licensing issues - or, at the very least - they shouldn't ever distract the site owners about what they feel about their site. In a former case, please clarify and have my apologies. In two other ones - sorry, but that really needs some downvotes.
- of 10y ago
  The "Complain" feature is my favorite feature of LibreJS! In fact, I think everything should have a complaint box. :P
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
Zikes 10y ago
The linked treatise on JavaScript sounds almost satirical to me[1]. > Our tentative policy is to consider a JavaScript program nontrivial if: > it makes an AJAX request or is loaded along with scripts that make an AJAX request, Sometimes I think RMS would be happier if the web had just stopped development after the release of the Mosaic browser. [1] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html
- jff 10y ago
  > Sometimes I think RMS would be happier if the web had just stopped development after the release of the Mosaic browser Sometimes I look at modern websites and think I'd be happier too.
  - Zikes 10y ago
    There are right and wrong ways to solve the web's many problems. RMS wants to throw the baby out with the bathwater here.
    - jpetso 10y ago
      So under the hypothetical assumption that you regarded RMS's problems as valid, what would you consider as the right ways to solve them?
- justinlardinois 10y ago
  I mean, doesn't he wget pages and then run them locally in lynx?
- throwanem 10y ago
  > Sometimes I think RMS would be happier if the web had just stopped development after the release of the Mosaic browser. Or before. He doesn't really [1] browse the web: > I generally do not connect to web sites from my own machine, aside from a few sites I have some special relationship with. I usually fetch web pages from other sites by sending mail to a program (see git://git.gnu.org/womb/hacks.git) that fetches them, much like wget, and then mails them back to me. Then I look at them using a web browser, unless it is easy to see the text in the HTML page directly. I usually try lynx first, then a graphical browser if the page needs it (using konqueror, which won't fetch from other sites in such a situation). [1] https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html
wvenable 10y ago
The majority of the sites on the web are non-free software that you interact with -- the browser is effectively a remote terminal. Whether or not large JavaScript is involved seems secondary. I understand the distinction between code running on a remote server and code distributed to me and run the browser but that seems like a more of a technical distinction than a moral one. (In terms of my own raw time, the percentage of open source[1] software the web I interact with daily is surprisingly high) [1] Unsure of exact licensing compatibility so I can't say it's all Free Software.
- justinlardinois 10y ago
  I was thinking this too. You can read the HTML and CSS of any website, but there's likely no licensing information attached to it. And you'll never see the server side code of most websites. What's the reason that's not considered a problem? Is it because it's not actually running on the user's computer? Or because you can think of the resulting HTML/CSS as output of the program?
  - Delmania 10y ago
    > What's the reason that's not considered a problem It's considered a problem: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.en.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-se...
    - Touche 10y ago
      > The original idea of web servers wasn't to do computing for you, it was to publish information for you to access. Even today this is what most web sites do, and it doesn't pose the SaaSS problem, because accessing someone's published information isn't doing your own computing. The more grey area that exists the harder it is for me to understand what Stallman's beliefs actually are. "doing your own computing", why is that the center of his moral beliefs? The longer time passes, the more it feels like Stallman is holding a lifelong vendetta because he had trouble debugging some printers.
andremendes 10y ago
Asides the core debate, it makes browsing way slower than I'd expect for an extension of this kind.
hoodoof 10y ago
This is from people who like to turn off JavaScript in a browser, right? Sort of a weird Camelot-esque quest for freedom.
- Zikes 10y ago
  NoScript I can easily understand. It's deciding for yourself what you do and don't want to run on your computer. LibreJS is trying to dictate that to all web developers, and its demands are ridiculous.
  - striking 10y ago
    At first I thought, "Oh, this is harmless. It just blocks JS that doesn't meet their standards." And then I read about the heuristic "Complain" tab. Dunno why you're being downvoted, that's a legitimate complaint. Why waste people's time on something like this?
  - kleiba 10y ago
    "dictate" is too strong a word for my taste. It seems to me more like these people have a certain view of the world and they're trying to convince people of their opinion. Like campaigning.
- rjeli 10y ago
  uMatrix makes it really, really easy to disable JavaScript by default. Yes, I have a tiny tinfoil hat, but it's about 7 seconds when I visit a new page to enable needed JS, and I'm not making thousands of random calls to foreign domains unknowingly.
justinlardinois 10y ago
And it looks like to get your Javascript to be considered free, even if it already is free, you have to jump through a bunch of hoops to get this to pick it up: http://www.gnu.org/software/librejs/free-your-javascript.html http://www.gnu.org/software/librejs/free-your-javascript.htm... This is a joke.
- mordocai 10y ago
  Sure, but how else can it tell? It isn't like code inherently has some kind of magical tag that tells you the license. So they created a format to tell the license.
  - justinlardinois 10y ago
    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.
    - Morgawr 10y ago
      >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.
      - Karunamon 10y ago
        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.
sdegutis 10y ago
It's really interesting to see GNU writing their own version of everything so that it adheres to its own principles. It reminds me of China. Both reinvent things based on questionable motivations, both seem to really not "get" every-day people (e.g. understand their needs and wants), and both end up with products that just feel lower-quality and half-put-together than the products they're cloning on principle.
- ymse 10y ago
  I'm curious, which products are you referring to? In most cases the GNU version predates the alternative by a large margin. E.g. screen vs tmux, squid vs varnish, wget vs curl, net-tools vs iproute2 etc. Of more recent software "clones", there is guix vs nix, mcron vs vixie-cron, shepherd vs systemd, gnutls vs openssl, all high-quality implementations of good ideas. Sure, lsh has a way to go before it's a viable alternative to OpenSSH, but I wouldn't say it's low-quality. I don't think I've come across a GNU project which felt "half-put-together", rather the opposite. The GNU projects' motivation is very clear-cut and not at all different from e.g. the BSD camp or suckless. How are they questionable?
  - rekado 10y ago
    > Of more recent software "clones", there is guix vs nix, mcron vs vixie-cron, shepherd vs systemd, gnutls vs openssl, all high-quality implementations of good ideas. Shepherd is hardly a clone of systemd. It's older and has much fewer features. They are both init systems. The relationship of Guix and Nix is also not that of rivalry. Guix uses the Nix daemon and subscribes to the idea of functional package management, but everything else is quite different. (I realise you put "clone" in quotes and wrote "all high-quality implementations of good ideas", but I thought I should clarify anyway.)
- rekado 10y ago
  I can only shake my head at your cardboard cutout of "China" and your take on GNU. I'm working on GNU because I share its vision of providing more computing freedom to people, blurring the lines between admins and users as is the case with Emacs (self-documenting, trivially extensible and modifiable), Guix (trivial inspection and modification of all packages on a system, a large step towards freedom from system administrators, independent software profiles giving each user what they want), and the Hurd (even more freedom from sys admins). I'm not even talking about the many compilers in GCC, which make it feasible to build a completely free system (such as GuixSD). You seem to misunderstand the GNU project, and I find it unpalatable to reduce what you call "China" to a cardboard cutout for the sake of a flawed analogy.
mankash666 10y ago
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-support-for-llvms-debugger-in-gnu-emacss-gudel https://slashdot.org/story/15/02/08/210241/rms-objects-to-su...
- kristopolous 10y ago
  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.
  - mankash666 10y ago
    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.
    - icebraining 10y ago
      Nonetheless, from RMS' recent commentaries, it does seem like for software, he wants to replace capitalism with socialism. Nonsense. There's nothing "socialist" about Free Software. Plenty of capitalistic companies make their money by using and writing FOSS. Like cited in the Slashdot link in my previous comment, he's gone so far as to demonize free software that isn't GPL. All he's doing is asking people to refrain from accepting a patch before he can talk to someone about it. What demonization?
      - mankash666 10y ago
chris_wot 10y ago
This could have been useful if it applied to ALL of Stallman's arguments. Like for instance, the ability to swap out JavaScript with your own code, which this can't do.
callesgg 10y ago
To me it would seam this boils down to a philosophical issue regarding what is information and what is code, and i guess ownership of information. If someone gives me something directly (like a book or information in a conversation) without a disclaimer or some sort of contract. I would assume it is now mine and i assume the law does to. And from my perspective getting a response from a http server is the same thing as being given something.
- madeofpalk 10y ago
  Nope. Viewing a website is much like watching a broadcast tv show. Copyright, in most countries, is granted implicitly to the creator, meaning you don't automatically get to 'own' any content from my website.
- matt4077 10y ago
  Yeah, that's not how it works. Copyright applies without notice (and even without intent). And as much as I disregard "Terms of Service" that some websites post (you may not deep-link...), I see that I can't construct the server's response as any sort of agreement to terms favourable to me.
- roywiggins 10y ago
  It may be yours to view, but it's not yours to copy and republish. That's what copyright is all about- the right to view and the right to copy are explicitly unbundled, and the former hardly ever implies the latter. You can't assume that if someone lets you into their house, they've implicitly granted you the right to enter their house whenever you want or invite your own guests. There's no disclaimer needed, ever, because it's their property. Copyright just extends that idea to intellectual property.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
gravypod 10y ago
I really want something like this, not for the freedom but for the battery savings. I'd love to be able to automatically detect which bits of JS are needed and run them selectivity. The added freedom and privacy are really nice, but I also need my laptop battery to last longer then a few hours.
connorshea 10y ago
At GitLab we've been working with some volunteers at the FSF/GNU Project to improve our score on the Ethical Repo Criteria Evaluation [1]. We've got an issue open about LibreJS [2] specifically, as well as another to fix the other issue preventing us from receiving a B grade. We're also working on resolving some of the A grade criteria, albeit not all of them [3]. It's disheartening to see the FSF demonized here, as I've been pleasantly surprised with the discussions I've had with most of their members. In the last HN thread about the Ethical Repo Evaluation, people called their requirements ridiculous. I agree with that for some of the A grade criteria, e.g. the GNU/Linux requirement, but I think people are misunderstanding the purpose of the A grade, which is to signal that a site is "sufficiently free" and can be used to host the GNU Project's source code. This is partly the fault of the FSF having poor communication, of course. I'd like to highlight a comment by an FSF Volunteer regarding our work on some criteria for the A grade, "Thanks for taking the time on this; I'm very encouraged, and I'm happy with any progress made. Again: since these criteria are for hosting of GNU projects, they're a bit more strict and won't be met by most services." GitLab CE is licensed under the MIT Expat License, not the GPL, and yet they're perfectly happy to work with us regardless. Outwardly they advocate for extreme ideas, but they're also willing to compromise. Apologies if this is rambly at all, or comes off as "shilling" in any way, I just wanted to share my story of interacting with the FSF. Hopefully I can convince some people that they're not all living in caves yelling about how they'll never use non-GPL software. [1]: https://www.gnu.org/software/repo-criteria-evaluation.html https://www.gnu.org/software/repo-criteria-evaluation.html [2]: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/15621 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/15621 [3]: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/15678 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/15678
- Delmania 10y ago
  > This is partly the fault of the FSF having poor communication, of course. You've highlighted here one of the biggest reasons why the FSF is demonized. The organization has made and continues to make significant contributions to computing. It also sounds like many people who volunteer there also realize the need to compromise in order to move forward. However, the FSF itself, as a few pointed out belief, is an organization focused on it ideology. While making good software is important for it to advance its agenda, the simple fact is how you say something is just as, if not more than, important as what you are saying. The message comes off just as bad as many fundamentalist religious organizations. That's going to drive away a lot of people, many of whom would agree if the message was marketed better.
pron 10y ago
I find the FSF's mission extremely important on an educational, "meta" level — regardless of the particular content of their ideology — especially in the Silicon Valley culture. According to the SV ethos, laws come in two flavors. The first is man-made laws, like the laws of government. Those are often described as "silly", "outdated" or downright "stupid"; it is imperative that SV culture hack those — as in break — and replace them with something else (as in "It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission"). The second kind of laws is the laws of the society (or the market, as a special case) — "what people want". Those laws need to be hacked — as in exploited cleverly — and are on the same level as natural laws. Opposing those is seen as "ideology" (with an implied negative connotation, as ideology is the futile fight with the laws of nature), or worse: "political ideology". Never mind that the entire goal of technology is fight the actual laws of nature, that in their eternal indifference, have placed annoying limitations — nay, "challenges" — on us humans. There is a strong naturalistic fallacy built into the SV ethos, that is only in effect when social laws are concerned[1]. The FSF is a movement that tackles celebrated SV ideas (code; freedom) yet reminds us that "emergent" social laws are just as man-made as the laws of governments, and unless proven otherwise, they can — and must — be changed by human action. This can be maddening to the hacker ideology, which views this direct, real political action as folly. Why fight what is impossible to fight if you can somehow hack a workaround? Wasting effort trying to divert a river seems crazy if you believe that "progress" can be achieved while swimming with the current. [1]: I have a theory as to why that is: to the somewhat autistic mind of some technology types, the physical laws are governed by unforgiving but inherently simple laws, presenting a well-designed puzzle, meant to be solved. The social laws, on the other hand, appear complex, impenetrable, even threatening. They are then either discounted as stupid (i.e., society can be simple, but isn’t because stupid people complicate it; a utopia would be governed by simple laws, resembling those of the physical world in structure), or surrendered to as something too powerful to understand and contend with head-on. A clever hacker is meant to exploit their quirky, but superficial idiosyncrasies, uncovered by statistics and "data", but must never fight them and never try to untangle their deep structure.
- pythia__ 10y ago
  >the entire goal of technology is fight the actual laws of nature I find this a very questionable premise. Technology, being constrained by physics, necessary works with the laws of nature at least to that extent[1]. Well-designed technology, however, most often also works with rather than against its materials[2] and with, rather than against, the human mind that is intended as its user. [1] E.g., airplanes do not fight physics to fly but use it. The "fight" view is based on an incomplete picture that ignores everything beyond gravity. [2] This is not the same as the intent of whoever created the materials, hence hacking.
ultim8k 10y ago
There are serious problems on this world and some people just make nonsense things based on nonsense fears.

GNU LibreJS

213 points by sciurus 10y ago

DanielDent 10y ago

Just wait until they discover NaCL, PNaCL, ASM.js, and web assembly...

rhinoceraptor 10y ago
Or even just regular minification, or using a compile-to-js language that emits non-human readable JS.
- Delmania 10y ago
  I could have sworn the "Javascript Trap" mentioned that issue, but I think the viewpoint is that minified JS is the compiled version. So long as you provide the raw files, it's fine.
detaro 10y ago
Why? Do you see Stallman objecting to people distributing binaries?

aaronbrethorst 10y ago

Apparently it adds a "Complain" tab to your browser when it detects offensive JavaScript: https://www.gnu.org/software/librejs/manual/librejs.html#Complaint-Feature https://www.gnu.org/software/librejs/manual/librejs.html#Com...

striking 10y ago
That's just what the world needs. More bikeshedding about "offensive JavaScript". Offensive JS includes: "It makes an AJAX request or is loaded along with scripts that make an AJAX request" and "Calling methods with the square bracket notation" and "Using any other construct than a string literal with certain methods (Obj.write, Obj.createElement, …)." If it includes something like the above (which 99% of HTML frameworks do) and it doesn't have a free license statement, should people really complain about it? Like, fine. Sure. You don't want to run non-free JS. Okay. But there's no reason to waste someone's time complaining about it, either. How is anyone supposed to take this seriously?
- madeofpalk 10y ago
  > Calling methods with the square bracket notation > If it includes something like the above [...] and it doesn't have a free license statement, should people really complain about it? Why on earth would this project concern itself with the coding styles of the JS that the author prefers? Even if the site and/or JS is free software, why do things things matter? I mean, I get linting your own code, but linting the code of sites you visit just seems pointless. This, banning AJAX requests and with the arduous process of getting into the 'libre' whitelist, makes this project a complete joke.
  - drdaeman 10y ago
    Where do you guys see the prohibition? I've opened https://www.gnu.org/software/librejs/manual/librejs.html#index-javascript https://www.gnu.org/software/librejs/manual/librejs.html#ind... and see that having functions, doing AJAX requests, square brackets and the other stuff is what they use to distinguish between trivial JS code and non-trivial one. And it exactly makes sense - no one wants to stick a license over every trivial JS one-liner that's could be less of a program and more of configuration statements block. But those who care about free software don't want to run non-free programs. So, the heuristics. But I really can't find anything like a ban on use of functions or AJAX requests, or something similarly ridiculous, that some comments here seem to imply. Seriously, WTF?
- s4chin 10y ago
  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.
  - alfonsodev 10y ago
    He usually says that we give up freedom in exchange of convenience. For example Facebook is convenient so, who cares about privacy ? I don't use LibreJS or plan to use it either, but I think his points are valid theoretically, implement them in our society is pretty hard but my point is, these libre tools being "impractical" doesn't invalidate the philosophical idea behind. I'd would call him idealist rather than a paranoid.
elcapitan 10y ago
"Offensive Javascript" is great Newspeak. So in addition to being sandboxed it should also be "safespaced"?
justinlardinois 10y ago
> LibreJS includes a default subject line and body for the complaint email, with a link to the JavaScript Trap essay. If that's not some pedantic RMS bullshit, I don't know what is. At least it's easy enough for a spam filter to catch.
- matt4077 10y ago
  Funny enough, that spam filter was probably written in emacs, compiled with gcc & make and GPL-licenced :)
- drdaeman 10y ago
  Either I really didn't get your comment, or you just wanted to call rms names, or you want to say that users shouldn't care about the licensing issues - or, at the very least - they shouldn't ever distract the site owners about what they feel about their site. In a former case, please clarify and have my apologies. In two other ones - sorry, but that really needs some downvotes.
of 10y ago
The "Complain" feature is my favorite feature of LibreJS! In fact, I think everything should have a complaint box. :P

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

Zikes 10y ago

The linked treatise on JavaScript sounds almost satirical to me[1]. > Our tentative policy is to consider a JavaScript program nontrivial if: > it makes an AJAX request or is loaded along with scripts that make an AJAX request, Sometimes I think RMS would be happier if the web had just stopped development after the release of the Mosaic browser. [1] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html

jff 10y ago
> Sometimes I think RMS would be happier if the web had just stopped development after the release of the Mosaic browser Sometimes I look at modern websites and think I'd be happier too.
- Zikes 10y ago
  There are right and wrong ways to solve the web's many problems. RMS wants to throw the baby out with the bathwater here.
  - jpetso 10y ago
    So under the hypothetical assumption that you regarded RMS's problems as valid, what would you consider as the right ways to solve them?
justinlardinois 10y ago
I mean, doesn't he wget pages and then run them locally in lynx?
throwanem 10y ago
> Sometimes I think RMS would be happier if the web had just stopped development after the release of the Mosaic browser. Or before. He doesn't really [1] browse the web: > I generally do not connect to web sites from my own machine, aside from a few sites I have some special relationship with. I usually fetch web pages from other sites by sending mail to a program (see git://git.gnu.org/womb/hacks.git) that fetches them, much like wget, and then mails them back to me. Then I look at them using a web browser, unless it is easy to see the text in the HTML page directly. I usually try lynx first, then a graphical browser if the page needs it (using konqueror, which won't fetch from other sites in such a situation). [1] https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html

wvenable 10y ago

The majority of the sites on the web are non-free software that you interact with -- the browser is effectively a remote terminal. Whether or not large JavaScript is involved seems secondary. I understand the distinction between code running on a remote server and code distributed to me and run the browser but that seems like a more of a technical distinction than a moral one. (In terms of my own raw time, the percentage of open source[1] software the web I interact with daily is surprisingly high) [1] Unsure of exact licensing compatibility so I can't say it's all Free Software.

justinlardinois 10y ago
I was thinking this too. You can read the HTML and CSS of any website, but there's likely no licensing information attached to it. And you'll never see the server side code of most websites. What's the reason that's not considered a problem? Is it because it's not actually running on the user's computer? Or because you can think of the resulting HTML/CSS as output of the program?
- Delmania 10y ago
  > What's the reason that's not considered a problem It's considered a problem: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.en.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-se...
  - Touche 10y ago
    > The original idea of web servers wasn't to do computing for you, it was to publish information for you to access. Even today this is what most web sites do, and it doesn't pose the SaaSS problem, because accessing someone's published information isn't doing your own computing. The more grey area that exists the harder it is for me to understand what Stallman's beliefs actually are. "doing your own computing", why is that the center of his moral beliefs? The longer time passes, the more it feels like Stallman is holding a lifelong vendetta because he had trouble debugging some printers.

andremendes 10y ago

Asides the core debate, it makes browsing way slower than I'd expect for an extension of this kind.

hoodoof 10y ago

This is from people who like to turn off JavaScript in a browser, right? Sort of a weird Camelot-esque quest for freedom.

Zikes 10y ago
NoScript I can easily understand. It's deciding for yourself what you do and don't want to run on your computer. LibreJS is trying to dictate that to all web developers, and its demands are ridiculous.
- striking 10y ago
  At first I thought, "Oh, this is harmless. It just blocks JS that doesn't meet their standards." And then I read about the heuristic "Complain" tab. Dunno why you're being downvoted, that's a legitimate complaint. Why waste people's time on something like this?
- kleiba 10y ago
  "dictate" is too strong a word for my taste. It seems to me more like these people have a certain view of the world and they're trying to convince people of their opinion. Like campaigning.
rjeli 10y ago
uMatrix makes it really, really easy to disable JavaScript by default. Yes, I have a tiny tinfoil hat, but it's about 7 seconds when I visit a new page to enable needed JS, and I'm not making thousands of random calls to foreign domains unknowingly.

justinlardinois 10y ago

And it looks like to get your Javascript to be considered free, even if it already is free, you have to jump through a bunch of hoops to get this to pick it up: http://www.gnu.org/software/librejs/free-your-javascript.html http://www.gnu.org/software/librejs/free-your-javascript.htm... This is a joke.

mordocai 10y ago
Sure, but how else can it tell? It isn't like code inherently has some kind of magical tag that tells you the license. So they created a format to tell the license.
- justinlardinois 10y ago
  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.
  - Morgawr 10y ago
    >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.
    - Karunamon 10y ago
      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.

sdegutis 10y ago

It's really interesting to see GNU writing their own version of everything so that it adheres to its own principles. It reminds me of China. Both reinvent things based on questionable motivations, both seem to really not "get" every-day people (e.g. understand their needs and wants), and both end up with products that just feel lower-quality and half-put-together than the products they're cloning on principle.

ymse 10y ago
I'm curious, which products are you referring to? In most cases the GNU version predates the alternative by a large margin. E.g. screen vs tmux, squid vs varnish, wget vs curl, net-tools vs iproute2 etc. Of more recent software "clones", there is guix vs nix, mcron vs vixie-cron, shepherd vs systemd, gnutls vs openssl, all high-quality implementations of good ideas. Sure, lsh has a way to go before it's a viable alternative to OpenSSH, but I wouldn't say it's low-quality. I don't think I've come across a GNU project which felt "half-put-together", rather the opposite. The GNU projects' motivation is very clear-cut and not at all different from e.g. the BSD camp or suckless. How are they questionable?
- rekado 10y ago
  > Of more recent software "clones", there is guix vs nix, mcron vs vixie-cron, shepherd vs systemd, gnutls vs openssl, all high-quality implementations of good ideas. Shepherd is hardly a clone of systemd. It's older and has much fewer features. They are both init systems. The relationship of Guix and Nix is also not that of rivalry. Guix uses the Nix daemon and subscribes to the idea of functional package management, but everything else is quite different. (I realise you put "clone" in quotes and wrote "all high-quality implementations of good ideas", but I thought I should clarify anyway.)
rekado 10y ago
I can only shake my head at your cardboard cutout of "China" and your take on GNU. I'm working on GNU because I share its vision of providing more computing freedom to people, blurring the lines between admins and users as is the case with Emacs (self-documenting, trivially extensible and modifiable), Guix (trivial inspection and modification of all packages on a system, a large step towards freedom from system administrators, independent software profiles giving each user what they want), and the Hurd (even more freedom from sys admins). I'm not even talking about the many compilers in GCC, which make it feasible to build a completely free system (such as GuixSD). You seem to misunderstand the GNU project, and I find it unpalatable to reduce what you call "China" to a cardboard cutout for the sake of a flawed analogy.

mankash666 10y ago

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-support-for-llvms-debugger-in-gnu-emacss-gudel https://slashdot.org/story/15/02/08/210241/rms-objects-to-su...

kristopolous 10y ago
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.
- mankash666 10y ago
  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.
  - icebraining 10y ago
    Nonetheless, from RMS' recent commentaries, it does seem like for software, he wants to replace capitalism with socialism. Nonsense. There's nothing "socialist" about Free Software. Plenty of capitalistic companies make their money by using and writing FOSS. Like cited in the Slashdot link in my previous comment, he's gone so far as to demonize free software that isn't GPL. All he's doing is asking people to refrain from accepting a patch before he can talk to someone about it. What demonization?
    - mankash666 10y ago

chris_wot 10y ago

This could have been useful if it applied to ALL of Stallman's arguments. Like for instance, the ability to swap out JavaScript with your own code, which this can't do.

callesgg 10y ago

To me it would seam this boils down to a philosophical issue regarding what is information and what is code, and i guess ownership of information. If someone gives me something directly (like a book or information in a conversation) without a disclaimer or some sort of contract. I would assume it is now mine and i assume the law does to. And from my perspective getting a response from a http server is the same thing as being given something.

madeofpalk 10y ago
Nope. Viewing a website is much like watching a broadcast tv show. Copyright, in most countries, is granted implicitly to the creator, meaning you don't automatically get to 'own' any content from my website.
matt4077 10y ago
Yeah, that's not how it works. Copyright applies without notice (and even without intent). And as much as I disregard "Terms of Service" that some websites post (you may not deep-link...), I see that I can't construct the server's response as any sort of agreement to terms favourable to me.
roywiggins 10y ago
It may be yours to view, but it's not yours to copy and republish. That's what copyright is all about- the right to view and the right to copy are explicitly unbundled, and the former hardly ever implies the latter. You can't assume that if someone lets you into their house, they've implicitly granted you the right to enter their house whenever you want or invite your own guests. There's no disclaimer needed, ever, because it's their property. Copyright just extends that idea to intellectual property.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

gravypod 10y ago

I really want something like this, not for the freedom but for the battery savings. I'd love to be able to automatically detect which bits of JS are needed and run them selectivity. The added freedom and privacy are really nice, but I also need my laptop battery to last longer then a few hours.

connorshea 10y ago

At GitLab we've been working with some volunteers at the FSF/GNU Project to improve our score on the Ethical Repo Criteria Evaluation [1]. We've got an issue open about LibreJS [2] specifically, as well as another to fix the other issue preventing us from receiving a B grade. We're also working on resolving some of the A grade criteria, albeit not all of them [3]. It's disheartening to see the FSF demonized here, as I've been pleasantly surprised with the discussions I've had with most of their members. In the last HN thread about the Ethical Repo Evaluation, people called their requirements ridiculous. I agree with that for some of the A grade criteria, e.g. the GNU/Linux requirement, but I think people are misunderstanding the purpose of the A grade, which is to signal that a site is "sufficiently free" and can be used to host the GNU Project's source code. This is partly the fault of the FSF having poor communication, of course. I'd like to highlight a comment by an FSF Volunteer regarding our work on some criteria for the A grade, "Thanks for taking the time on this; I'm very encouraged, and I'm happy with any progress made. Again: since these criteria are for hosting of GNU projects, they're a bit more strict and won't be met by most services." GitLab CE is licensed under the MIT Expat License, not the GPL, and yet they're perfectly happy to work with us regardless. Outwardly they advocate for extreme ideas, but they're also willing to compromise. Apologies if this is rambly at all, or comes off as "shilling" in any way, I just wanted to share my story of interacting with the FSF. Hopefully I can convince some people that they're not all living in caves yelling about how they'll never use non-GPL software. [1]: https://www.gnu.org/software/repo-criteria-evaluation.html https://www.gnu.org/software/repo-criteria-evaluation.html [2]: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/15621 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/15621 [3]: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/15678 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/15678

Delmania 10y ago
> This is partly the fault of the FSF having poor communication, of course. You've highlighted here one of the biggest reasons why the FSF is demonized. The organization has made and continues to make significant contributions to computing. It also sounds like many people who volunteer there also realize the need to compromise in order to move forward. However, the FSF itself, as a few pointed out belief, is an organization focused on it ideology. While making good software is important for it to advance its agenda, the simple fact is how you say something is just as, if not more than, important as what you are saying. The message comes off just as bad as many fundamentalist religious organizations. That's going to drive away a lot of people, many of whom would agree if the message was marketed better.

pron 10y ago

I find the FSF's mission extremely important on an educational, "meta" level — regardless of the particular content of their ideology — especially in the Silicon Valley culture. According to the SV ethos, laws come in two flavors. The first is man-made laws, like the laws of government. Those are often described as "silly", "outdated" or downright "stupid"; it is imperative that SV culture hack those — as in break — and replace them with something else (as in "It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission"). The second kind of laws is the laws of the society (or the market, as a special case) — "what people want". Those laws need to be hacked — as in exploited cleverly — and are on the same level as natural laws. Opposing those is seen as "ideology" (with an implied negative connotation, as ideology is the futile fight with the laws of nature), or worse: "political ideology". Never mind that the entire goal of technology is fight the actual laws of nature, that in their eternal indifference, have placed annoying limitations — nay, "challenges" — on us humans. There is a strong naturalistic fallacy built into the SV ethos, that is only in effect when social laws are concerned[1]. The FSF is a movement that tackles celebrated SV ideas (code; freedom) yet reminds us that "emergent" social laws are just as man-made as the laws of governments, and unless proven otherwise, they can — and must — be changed by human action. This can be maddening to the hacker ideology, which views this direct, real political action as folly. Why fight what is impossible to fight if you can somehow hack a workaround? Wasting effort trying to divert a river seems crazy if you believe that "progress" can be achieved while swimming with the current. [1]: I have a theory as to why that is: to the somewhat autistic mind of some technology types, the physical laws are governed by unforgiving but inherently simple laws, presenting a well-designed puzzle, meant to be solved. The social laws, on the other hand, appear complex, impenetrable, even threatening. They are then either discounted as stupid (i.e., society can be simple, but isn’t because stupid people complicate it; a utopia would be governed by simple laws, resembling those of the physical world in structure), or surrendered to as something too powerful to understand and contend with head-on. A clever hacker is meant to exploit their quirky, but superficial idiosyncrasies, uncovered by statistics and "data", but must never fight them and never try to untangle their deep structure.

pythia__ 10y ago
>the entire goal of technology is fight the actual laws of nature I find this a very questionable premise. Technology, being constrained by physics, necessary works with the laws of nature at least to that extent[1]. Well-designed technology, however, most often also works with rather than against its materials[2] and with, rather than against, the human mind that is intended as its user. [1] E.g., airplanes do not fight physics to fly but use it. The "fight" view is based on an incomplete picture that ignores everything beyond gravity. [2] This is not the same as the intent of whoever created the materials, hence hacking.

ultim8k 10y ago

There are serious problems on this world and some people just make nonsense things based on nonsense fears.