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> While we can't link to Google's issue tracker directly because of another freedom issue -- its use of nonfree JavaScript -- we're told ... While there may be

> While we can't link to Google's issue tracker directly because of another freedom issue -- its use of nonfree JavaScript -- we're told ... While there may be genuinely good arguments for keeping JPEG-XL, I cannot take seriously the arguments of an organisation that cuts itself off from the rest of the world for such silly reasons. Edit: Google's argument that there wasn't enough interest is equally impossible to take seriously when it was always behind an optional flag. No web devs are going to invest time in developing JPEG-XL functionality until their users can actually use it.

principles1 4y ago
[flagged]
- jmull 4y ago
  Do you really think an insult is the right rebuttal? (Also, the insult is baseless, since the previous poster may have strong principles, even if they aren’t the same as yours.)
  - skissane 4y ago
    New account whose first comment is flamewar-style insult-no point engaging with them, they clearly aren’t here for constructive discussion, just flag and move on. With enough flags it will go dead (Can everyone flag comments? Or is there some minimum karma for it? I forget.)
    - z500 4y ago
      Seems the minimum karma limit is at least 4.
- anotherhue 4y ago
  The keyboard you used to type this likely lacks open firmware.
thriftwy 4y ago
If Google's website is designed in the fashion where none of the content is available statically and the only way to access it is via running a blob of intrusive code, I can understand their sentiment. I would love people to stop linking, and posting links, to e.g. Facebook because the only thing it would show me is "you have to register to view this".
- politelemon 4y ago
  If non-intrusive browsers existed, which could run Javascript, is that considered acceptable to go to JS sites? eg what about Firefox or its derivatives?
  - chomp 4y ago
    No. The objection to linking to sites with JS is that they contain nonfree JS blobs that spy on you, run unknown obfuscated code, and are not open to modification, because they’re almost always obfuscated.
    - Eduard 4y ago
      Still silly, because whoever cares about that stance can just visit the site with (requests for) Javascript disabled.
      - jraph 4y ago
        Chromium bug tracker doesn't work with Javascript disabled.
        Eduard 4y ago
        okay, I appreciate your reply. Even so, linking to the issue is helpful, including JavaScript disablers.
        jraph 4y ago
guilhas 4y ago
I agree with the FSF principles. But they could add a picture, or a link to an archive site that strips most JS. To avoid users having to go and open the real thing to see it
- tedunangst 4y ago
  But then they themselves may have to read the source material, instead of relying on a vague "we're told" that may or may not be true.
neilv 4y ago
Unfortunately, I think this is a phenomenon with the FSF... They want to raise a point X, which could in theory be communicated in a persuasive way. But they can't resist also mentioning their zero-tolerance on unrelated point Y. I think the Y makes people tend to go WTF, and then dismiss both X and Y. Every time now, I'm thinking "You don't have to always mention Y!" On at least a couple occasions, I actually abandoned an argument I was making on some X in a venue, because some FSF person jumped in with a Y. If I didn't know they were a true-believer in Y and at least sympathetic to X, I'd think they were trying to discredit both. The FSF has some great principles, but a lot of the communications don't seem to be calibrated for me, nor for my understanding of anyone else.
- matheusmoreira 4y ago
  FSF is the uncompromising idealist for better and for worse. It takes some serious balls to live life the way RMS does, fetching HTML by sending email and all that. No one else wants to be that extreme, so even though they value computing freedom in the abstract they compromise and tolerate little injustices in the name of getting things done. At the end of the day RMS is still right though. Those little injustices add up, the corporations creep up on you slowly and next thing you know you're being surveilled by the javascript you used to see as harmless, and soon you learn how to tolerate that too. Dude saw ridiculously far into the future even decades ago but it doesn't matter because stuff like RYF certification is irrelevant and will only ever apply to machines that must 20 years old by now because manufacturers don't care and everyone is on mobile now anyway.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - hammyhavoc 4y ago
    That's assuming RMS isn't just LARPing.
  - grumbel 4y ago
    The Javascript issue never made sense to me. You are reading a non-free document to begin with, what difference does it make if it is running Javascript or not? If they wanna spy on you they can do that with HTML and CSS just as well. Even releasing the spying software under GPL wouldn't stop it from spying on you. The party one should be angry about here is the browser, which provides little to no tools to show the user what is going on and provides no real means to stop it. This is quite a bit different from the early web days when every browser had a "Javascript off" and style sheet selector right in the main menu by default. > Dude saw ridiculously far into the future even decades ago Not far enough. Ever since the whole world moved to "software as a service" and your computer has become little more than a thin terminal to some Google/Facebook/whatever-service FSF started to feel quite out of touch. Sure, they tell you "don't do that", but while that isn't wrong, it's not exactly helpful either. Many service simply have to run on a computer that you don't own and we need rules to govern that. None of the Free Software licenses help here. FSF never bothered to create any kind of licenses or best practices that deal with how those services should work. They are stuck in dealing with software freedom problems of the 90s, not the problems we face today. Luckily we do have the GDPR now, but the FSF had nothing to do with that and never provided anything similar.
kps 4y ago
Chromium's issue tracker appears to be open source, under the same BSD-type license as the core browser. https://chromium.googlesource.com/infra/infra/+/refs/heads/main/appengine/monorail/README.md https://chromium.googlesource.com/infra/infra/+/refs/heads/m... The deployment references google-analytics, but everyone already blocks that, right?
jacooper 4y ago
And that exact mindset made them totally irrelevant in the real world. The FSFE and other organizations like the EFF and the EDRI are much more relevant and have a bigger impact than an org which still insists on using devices from 2007
rightbyte 4y ago
> I cannot take seriously the arguments of an organisation that cuts itself off from the rest of the world for such silly reasons. Why would they risk unsuspecting visitors running Google code on their computer? It is a spyware company. There is nothing silly about not wanting to link to Google. Maybe futile given their market domination. But not silly.

principles1 4y ago

[flagged]

jmull 4y ago
Do you really think an insult is the right rebuttal? (Also, the insult is baseless, since the previous poster may have strong principles, even if they aren’t the same as yours.)
- skissane 4y ago
  New account whose first comment is flamewar-style insult-no point engaging with them, they clearly aren’t here for constructive discussion, just flag and move on. With enough flags it will go dead (Can everyone flag comments? Or is there some minimum karma for it? I forget.)
  - z500 4y ago
    Seems the minimum karma limit is at least 4.
anotherhue 4y ago
The keyboard you used to type this likely lacks open firmware.

thriftwy 4y ago

If Google's website is designed in the fashion where none of the content is available statically and the only way to access it is via running a blob of intrusive code, I can understand their sentiment. I would love people to stop linking, and posting links, to e.g. Facebook because the only thing it would show me is "you have to register to view this".

politelemon 4y ago
If non-intrusive browsers existed, which could run Javascript, is that considered acceptable to go to JS sites? eg what about Firefox or its derivatives?
- chomp 4y ago
  No. The objection to linking to sites with JS is that they contain nonfree JS blobs that spy on you, run unknown obfuscated code, and are not open to modification, because they’re almost always obfuscated.
  - Eduard 4y ago
    Still silly, because whoever cares about that stance can just visit the site with (requests for) Javascript disabled.
    - jraph 4y ago
      Chromium bug tracker doesn't work with Javascript disabled.
      - Eduard 4y ago
        okay, I appreciate your reply. Even so, linking to the issue is helpful, including JavaScript disablers.
        jraph 4y ago

guilhas 4y ago

I agree with the FSF principles. But they could add a picture, or a link to an archive site that strips most JS. To avoid users having to go and open the real thing to see it

tedunangst 4y ago
But then they themselves may have to read the source material, instead of relying on a vague "we're told" that may or may not be true.

neilv 4y ago

Unfortunately, I think this is a phenomenon with the FSF... They want to raise a point X, which could in theory be communicated in a persuasive way. But they can't resist also mentioning their zero-tolerance on unrelated point Y. I think the Y makes people tend to go WTF, and then dismiss both X and Y. Every time now, I'm thinking "You don't have to always mention Y!" On at least a couple occasions, I actually abandoned an argument I was making on some X in a venue, because some FSF person jumped in with a Y. If I didn't know they were a true-believer in Y and at least sympathetic to X, I'd think they were trying to discredit both. The FSF has some great principles, but a lot of the communications don't seem to be calibrated for me, nor for my understanding of anyone else.

matheusmoreira 4y ago
FSF is the uncompromising idealist for better and for worse. It takes some serious balls to live life the way RMS does, fetching HTML by sending email and all that. No one else wants to be that extreme, so even though they value computing freedom in the abstract they compromise and tolerate little injustices in the name of getting things done. At the end of the day RMS is still right though. Those little injustices add up, the corporations creep up on you slowly and next thing you know you're being surveilled by the javascript you used to see as harmless, and soon you learn how to tolerate that too. Dude saw ridiculously far into the future even decades ago but it doesn't matter because stuff like RYF certification is irrelevant and will only ever apply to machines that must 20 years old by now because manufacturers don't care and everyone is on mobile now anyway.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- hammyhavoc 4y ago
  That's assuming RMS isn't just LARPing.
- grumbel 4y ago
  The Javascript issue never made sense to me. You are reading a non-free document to begin with, what difference does it make if it is running Javascript or not? If they wanna spy on you they can do that with HTML and CSS just as well. Even releasing the spying software under GPL wouldn't stop it from spying on you. The party one should be angry about here is the browser, which provides little to no tools to show the user what is going on and provides no real means to stop it. This is quite a bit different from the early web days when every browser had a "Javascript off" and style sheet selector right in the main menu by default. > Dude saw ridiculously far into the future even decades ago Not far enough. Ever since the whole world moved to "software as a service" and your computer has become little more than a thin terminal to some Google/Facebook/whatever-service FSF started to feel quite out of touch. Sure, they tell you "don't do that", but while that isn't wrong, it's not exactly helpful either. Many service simply have to run on a computer that you don't own and we need rules to govern that. None of the Free Software licenses help here. FSF never bothered to create any kind of licenses or best practices that deal with how those services should work. They are stuck in dealing with software freedom problems of the 90s, not the problems we face today. Luckily we do have the GDPR now, but the FSF had nothing to do with that and never provided anything similar.

kps 4y ago

Chromium's issue tracker appears to be open source, under the same BSD-type license as the core browser. https://chromium.googlesource.com/infra/infra/+/refs/heads/main/appengine/monorail/README.md https://chromium.googlesource.com/infra/infra/+/refs/heads/m... The deployment references google-analytics, but everyone already blocks that, right?

jacooper 4y ago

And that exact mindset made them totally irrelevant in the real world. The FSFE and other organizations like the EFF and the EDRI are much more relevant and have a bigger impact than an org which still insists on using devices from 2007

rightbyte 4y ago

> I cannot take seriously the arguments of an organisation that cuts itself off from the rest of the world for such silly reasons. Why would they risk unsuspecting visitors running Google code on their computer? It is a spyware company. There is nothing silly about not wanting to link to Google. Maybe futile given their market domination. But not silly.