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This is ridiculous. GNU should be badgering those sites to open source their client JS, or funding competitors that will. Trying to encourage people to enter

This is ridiculous. GNU should be badgering those sites to open source their client JS, or funding competitors that will. Trying to encourage people to enter into an endless game of Whac-A-Mole fixing and re-fixing browser extensions to work with sites as they update isn't a solution. Who here is going to spend countless hours on that thankless task?

capableweb 6y ago
> Who here is going to spend countless hours on that thankless task? Eh, I assume a lot of people? That's basically what the entire open source space is about! (the person one, not the "corporate open source" that is gaining traction lately) Don't forget that by "spending countless hours on a thankless task" is how we initially got tools like docker, ansible, bootstrap and more. I agree with your first part though, that there is probably a better, more efficient solution that carries chance of more sustainable results.
- aloisdg 6y ago
  or most of the modding community, wikipedia and much more.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    Exactly. Makes me wonder what happened with userscripts lately? Is that community still going? Are there any mechanisms - technological or social - that would let me feel safe about downloading a popular userscript without doing a full-day focused audit of it? I know this can be made to work - modding communities are a perfect example, you can have people dealing with crap and unexpected breakage on a timely basis and releasing trustworthy, high-value code for free. I just feel it didn't happen with userscripts for some reason.
    - capableweb 6y ago
      > Makes me wonder what happened with userscripts lately? Is that community still going? Oh yes, I still run userscripts from time to time. I've started using JS bookmarks more and more though, to control the triggering of user JS code whenever I want, rather than having something to run on each page load. But I think the new webextension stuff that Chrome initially released, and now supported by every major browser, ate the lunch of userscripts.
    - pwdisswordfish0 6y ago
      > Are there any mechanisms - technological or social - that would let me feel safe Yes: if FSF/GNU (or a similar organization in that orbit) ran their own repository of user scripts, in the vein of distros' package repos.
matheusmoreira 6y ago
> Trying to encourage people to enter into an endless game of Whac-A-Mole fixing and re-fixing browser extensions to work with sites as they update isn't a solution. Sure it is. This is called adversarial interoperability and it is great: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/adversarial-interoperability-reviving-elegant-weapon-more-civilized-age-slay https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/adversarial-interopera... People are going to fix bad websites whether or not their owners want them to. This is exactly how ad blockers work and they solve so many problems with the web it's not even funny. I've posted many times about how we should just stop trusting hostile website javascripts and start writing custom free software scrappers or clients for all of them. I suppose GNU had the same idea. Awesome! > Who here is going to spend countless hours on that thankless task? I spent quite some time writing my own JS code for my school's portal because the default site was unusably bad. The results were pretty good and lasted until months after my graduation. If everyone did this, the web would be fixed in no time. Why should we allow companies and web developers to have the ultimate say in how their sites work? The javascript is running on our computers and we can totally replace it if we want. We are in control and it is time to start exercising this power.
- NohatCoder 6y ago
  Modifying and improving websites this way is great, I have done it myself. But the article suggests to reject the default behavior of well working sites solely because of the license of the code, that is where the ratio of ideology to real-world benefit goes haywire.
- fredgrott 6y ago
  user vs developer....users will never do it thus it will fail. they have forgotten the users demographic of free source consumers.
  - matheusmoreira 6y ago
    There are many sites out there with enhancement extensions. Sites like the Steam store, reddit, imageboards and probably many others. These things are so useful they replace the default experience. It gets to the point the only thing the sites need to provide is a JSON API for these extensions to consume. The default HTML interface is a fallback for compatibility. All GNU needs to make is a browser extension that collects custom javascripts for all kinds of sites. One person goes and fixes a popular site? All they need to do is contribute that to the GNU repository. The extension will automatically load the new code when users visit the site.
zajio1am 6y ago
> Trying to encourage people to enter into an endless game of Whac-A-Mole fixing and re-fixing browser extensions to work with sites as they update isn't a solution. In cases like youtube-dl or gallery-dl this solution works.

capableweb 6y ago

> Who here is going to spend countless hours on that thankless task? Eh, I assume a lot of people? That's basically what the entire open source space is about! (the person one, not the "corporate open source" that is gaining traction lately) Don't forget that by "spending countless hours on a thankless task" is how we initially got tools like docker, ansible, bootstrap and more. I agree with your first part though, that there is probably a better, more efficient solution that carries chance of more sustainable results.

aloisdg 6y ago
or most of the modding community, wikipedia and much more.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  Exactly. Makes me wonder what happened with userscripts lately? Is that community still going? Are there any mechanisms - technological or social - that would let me feel safe about downloading a popular userscript without doing a full-day focused audit of it? I know this can be made to work - modding communities are a perfect example, you can have people dealing with crap and unexpected breakage on a timely basis and releasing trustworthy, high-value code for free. I just feel it didn't happen with userscripts for some reason.
  - capableweb 6y ago
    > Makes me wonder what happened with userscripts lately? Is that community still going? Oh yes, I still run userscripts from time to time. I've started using JS bookmarks more and more though, to control the triggering of user JS code whenever I want, rather than having something to run on each page load. But I think the new webextension stuff that Chrome initially released, and now supported by every major browser, ate the lunch of userscripts.
  - pwdisswordfish0 6y ago
    > Are there any mechanisms - technological or social - that would let me feel safe Yes: if FSF/GNU (or a similar organization in that orbit) ran their own repository of user scripts, in the vein of distros' package repos.

matheusmoreira 6y ago

> Trying to encourage people to enter into an endless game of Whac-A-Mole fixing and re-fixing browser extensions to work with sites as they update isn't a solution. Sure it is. This is called adversarial interoperability and it is great: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/adversarial-interoperability-reviving-elegant-weapon-more-civilized-age-slay https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/adversarial-interopera... People are going to fix bad websites whether or not their owners want them to. This is exactly how ad blockers work and they solve so many problems with the web it's not even funny. I've posted many times about how we should just stop trusting hostile website javascripts and start writing custom free software scrappers or clients for all of them. I suppose GNU had the same idea. Awesome! > Who here is going to spend countless hours on that thankless task? I spent quite some time writing my own JS code for my school's portal because the default site was unusably bad. The results were pretty good and lasted until months after my graduation. If everyone did this, the web would be fixed in no time. Why should we allow companies and web developers to have the ultimate say in how their sites work? The javascript is running on our computers and we can totally replace it if we want. We are in control and it is time to start exercising this power.

NohatCoder 6y ago
Modifying and improving websites this way is great, I have done it myself. But the article suggests to reject the default behavior of well working sites solely because of the license of the code, that is where the ratio of ideology to real-world benefit goes haywire.
fredgrott 6y ago
user vs developer....users will never do it thus it will fail. they have forgotten the users demographic of free source consumers.
- matheusmoreira 6y ago
  There are many sites out there with enhancement extensions. Sites like the Steam store, reddit, imageboards and probably many others. These things are so useful they replace the default experience. It gets to the point the only thing the sites need to provide is a JSON API for these extensions to consume. The default HTML interface is a fallback for compatibility. All GNU needs to make is a browser extension that collects custom javascripts for all kinds of sites. One person goes and fixes a popular site? All they need to do is contribute that to the GNU repository. The extension will automatically load the new code when users visit the site.

zajio1am 6y ago

> Trying to encourage people to enter into an endless game of Whac-A-Mole fixing and re-fixing browser extensions to work with sites as they update isn't a solution. In cases like youtube-dl or gallery-dl this solution works.