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Open source/free/libre software is a great idea, but a lot of JS code out there is nontrivial, useful and incredibly narrow in scope. Compare it to a build scri
by AshleysBrain 12y ago
Open source/free/libre software is a great idea, but a lot of JS code out there is nontrivial, useful and incredibly narrow in scope. Compare it to a build script: it may be relatively complex, yet so specific to its particular use case that it is not really useful to anyone to open source it. I think this is much the case with Javascript on the web. Some websites may have genuinely useful nontrivial code full of their own domains and site-specific classes and IDs, and it's not worth anything to anyone else, but it qualifies as nontrivial nonfree and now deserves to be blocked!
Defining "nontrivial" is probably impossible, and the attempt looks a bit clumsy: making a network request apparently instantly qualifies you as non-trivial, even though your browser probably made a bunch of network requests for static content just to load the page. Want to load a sound to play with the Web Audio API? You now need to open source your Javascript code and provide a correct license to avoid blocking. The given description also means use of obj[prop] (often used to mimic a hashmap, thereby arbitrarily disqualifying certain data structures) or loading an external script via <script src="..."></script> (thereby disqualifying certain kinds of optimisation or organisation) count you as "nontrivial".
How can this ever be objectively determined? And if the punishment is blocking then how is it ever going to be fair?
- Terr_ 12y agoIn addition to the "too-tailored" issue, another problem with code reuse is that Javascript doesn't have any (good && standard) ways to handle packages, dependencies, or (partly the browsers' fault) load order.
- drdaeman 12y agoI heard, Free Software is not about code reuse, but something about user freedoms.