Richard Stallman Warns About Non-Free Web Apps

An anonymous reader writes "Richard Stallman has published an article which warns about the 'Javascript trap' posed by non-free AJAX-based applications. The article calls for a mechanism which would enable browsers to identify freely-licensed Javascript applications and run modified version thereof. 'It is possible to release a Javascript program as free software,' Stallman writes. 'But even if the program's source is available, there is no easy way to run your modified version instead of the original ... The effect is comparable to tivoization, although not quite so hard to overcome.'"

Comments

Nice to see it worked

[rumith]

Actually, it was me who alerted him on this issue (using GMail as an example). However, that was almost a year (!) ago. Took him a long time, but I couldn't expect any less, since the man almost never uses a browser at all...

P.S. For those interested, here is the transcript of our email conversation.

Web Apps

[LaminatorX]

RMS may be a cranky extremist, but he's still right far more often than he's wrong. Web apps are in some ways a huge step backwards in terms of openness. If you're lucky there's a wsdl you can analyze but even then that's really just a client-facing API. What's less free/open than a binary-only distribution? One that's never even distributed in the first place. May I please continue to access this application, sir?