3 ms·

On the flip side of that coin, as a user, it also makes hard to control your own software - you are not in control of the version you are using, not in control

On the flip side of that coin, as a user, it also makes hard to control your own software - you are not in control of the version you are using, not in control of the features the program has and above all not in control of the availability of that program as whoever owns the server you are accessing it from can revoke that access at any point for whatever arbitrary (but of course always mentioned in the Terms and Conditions that nobody reads) reasons. I'd be aware of promoting anything that takes control away from the user. The web is fine for sharing knowledge and communication (and pictures of cats) but let's not put everything in it or we'll certainly regret for giving away the power to control our software.

krapp 9y ago
That assumes it would be impossible to download a WASM blob and run it natively, or that no one will ever provide source code for their binaries which you could potentially edit. It's not a zero-sum game.
- badsectoracula 9y ago
  I believe we have already enough evidence, both by the existing web applications and by the other RIA technologies available over the years (Applets, Flash, Silverlight, ActiveX, etc) that this is a very safe assumption to make. There are exceptions to this, of course (i myself made the source code of my 3D engine for Flash written in Haxe available years ago), but those are extremely rare. Besides the experience the original GP post was talking about and the message i replied to didn't really leave any room for not making such an assumption since they were all about comparing web apps to native apps: " I have been thinking about why we have ended up here, and why not just native apps." And finally, i do not see WASM being of giving any more control to the user than existing web tech - after all it relies on the rest of the webpage to work, much like JavaScript (actually, it does require JavaScript to act as a mediator - at least for the time being) and considering how you cannot download Google Docs as a native offline application to use on your desktop, despite being able to save locally the JavaScript it downloads on your browser, i fully expect to be the same situation with WASM too.
  - krapp 9y ago
    Drawing inferences based on other technologies isn't really evidence. WebAssembly is open and it's intended to be a general purpose compilation target, the technologies you listed are proprietary or only intended for a single language. Also, WebAssembly's own docs state non-web embeddings as an explicit design goal[0]. As there is no commercial need for a particular corporation to prevent it, and there is no design limitation preventing it, there's no reason to assume some sort of native WASM runtime won't be available in the future. That would make it no different than Python or Ruby or any of the multitude of C++ runtimes I have to download with games on Steam. My point being that there's no reason to assume WASM has to run as remote code connected to a server over which the user has no control or meaningful access, as opposed to a binary you can run on your desktop. There's nothing in the WASM spec that forces such a distinction to exist, that's an architectural decision made at the application level, and one that could be made in any language. [0]http://webassembly.org/docs/non-web/ http://webassembly.org/docs/non-web/
    - badsectoracula 9y ago
      I think we are talking about different things, you seem to be talking about the possibility of using WASM as a generic virtual machine in the same vein as JVM - in that case, if there is some sort of runtime that would provide the ability for a program to be made to work both in web mode and offline mode and the developer decides to make their application available through it, then yes it wont be an issue. After all people already do that with JVM, Flash and even ActiveX (which was originally meant for offline use). But i am not talking about such a use, i am talking about using WASM to create applications that are designed to be part of a web site and meant to be accessible only online - pretty much what the majority of Flash games did previously. The original message i replied to was about web-based applications that are meant to be delivered online so my messages were with the assumption that we are talking about web-based applications pretty much in the same vein as Google Docs or games like the thousands of Flash games you'd see out there some years ago. You wrote "That assumes it would be impossible to download a WASM blob and run it natively" - the possibility to do that would be exactly the same as downloading a JS file and run it natively (in this case i take "natively" to mean running an offline local copy in a browser without any sort of external requirement, like downloading files off the web). I do not see a reason for expecting WASM to be used in any different way.

krapp 9y ago

That assumes it would be impossible to download a WASM blob and run it natively, or that no one will ever provide source code for their binaries which you could potentially edit. It's not a zero-sum game.

badsectoracula 9y ago
I believe we have already enough evidence, both by the existing web applications and by the other RIA technologies available over the years (Applets, Flash, Silverlight, ActiveX, etc) that this is a very safe assumption to make. There are exceptions to this, of course (i myself made the source code of my 3D engine for Flash written in Haxe available years ago), but those are extremely rare. Besides the experience the original GP post was talking about and the message i replied to didn't really leave any room for not making such an assumption since they were all about comparing web apps to native apps: " I have been thinking about why we have ended up here, and why not just native apps." And finally, i do not see WASM being of giving any more control to the user than existing web tech - after all it relies on the rest of the webpage to work, much like JavaScript (actually, it does require JavaScript to act as a mediator - at least for the time being) and considering how you cannot download Google Docs as a native offline application to use on your desktop, despite being able to save locally the JavaScript it downloads on your browser, i fully expect to be the same situation with WASM too.
- krapp 9y ago
  Drawing inferences based on other technologies isn't really evidence. WebAssembly is open and it's intended to be a general purpose compilation target, the technologies you listed are proprietary or only intended for a single language. Also, WebAssembly's own docs state non-web embeddings as an explicit design goal[0]. As there is no commercial need for a particular corporation to prevent it, and there is no design limitation preventing it, there's no reason to assume some sort of native WASM runtime won't be available in the future. That would make it no different than Python or Ruby or any of the multitude of C++ runtimes I have to download with games on Steam. My point being that there's no reason to assume WASM has to run as remote code connected to a server over which the user has no control or meaningful access, as opposed to a binary you can run on your desktop. There's nothing in the WASM spec that forces such a distinction to exist, that's an architectural decision made at the application level, and one that could be made in any language. [0]http://webassembly.org/docs/non-web/ http://webassembly.org/docs/non-web/
  - badsectoracula 9y ago
    I think we are talking about different things, you seem to be talking about the possibility of using WASM as a generic virtual machine in the same vein as JVM - in that case, if there is some sort of runtime that would provide the ability for a program to be made to work both in web mode and offline mode and the developer decides to make their application available through it, then yes it wont be an issue. After all people already do that with JVM, Flash and even ActiveX (which was originally meant for offline use). But i am not talking about such a use, i am talking about using WASM to create applications that are designed to be part of a web site and meant to be accessible only online - pretty much what the majority of Flash games did previously. The original message i replied to was about web-based applications that are meant to be delivered online so my messages were with the assumption that we are talking about web-based applications pretty much in the same vein as Google Docs or games like the thousands of Flash games you'd see out there some years ago. You wrote "That assumes it would be impossible to download a WASM blob and run it natively" - the possibility to do that would be exactly the same as downloading a JS file and run it natively (in this case i take "natively" to mean running an offline local copy in a browser without any sort of external requirement, like downloading files off the web). I do not see a reason for expecting WASM to be used in any different way.