Slashdot Mirror
Taking Action For Free JavaScript
Atticus Rex writes "Today the FSF kicked off a campaign to put pressure on webmasters to make their sites work without requiring nonfree JavaScript. The first target is Regulations.gov, a site the US government uses to take public comments on proposed regulations. Right now, the site requires nonfree JavaScript, requiring citizens to sacrifice their freedom as users to take part in their democracy."
I never realized visiting a website required me to "sacrifice my freedom"!
So the FSF still seems to be able to find ways to make themselves more loony and fringe. Nice job guys!
Wait until Stallman realizes he's "sacrificed his freedom" just by turning on a computer.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
The most important aspect of this issue is transparency.
Users should be aware of what's going on.
In theory, it means one should not be able to enter a website without a disclaimer about the site and what it does.
The website authors/owner should be providing the info on automation and/or any info taken from the user and how it is used.it is the user's responsibility to decide if they wish to enter and as such, this means they must agree with the terms of the site.
Now, in the case of federal sites and/or governmental sites, this must be enforced. Basically they should be able to police themselves on this.
More than likely add this to Section 508 when it comes to the US Government.
This issue has been around for a long time when it comes to privacy, cookies use, etc.
To me, it's not about "non-free" JavaScript, but rather, it should be about awareness of the site and it's purpose and whether or not they collect data and what they do with it.
That's not even the tip of the iceberg.
The HTML code you download for the vast majority of the web is protected by copyright. The exact same copyright that protects the Javascript. The exact same copyright that gives the GPL license its power to force GPL upon derivatives.
What about all the non-free images and text taking away your rights?
Wake up people!111
Contrary to popular perception, JavaScript does not run "on the Web site" -- it runs locally on users' computers when they visit a site.
This statement makes no sense. If you actually know what JavaScript is, you probably know it runs in the web browser. If you don't know what JavaScript is, you don't have any perceptions about it whatsoever.
As relevant as ever.
Here is how you can download a copy of the js code, ready, this is very complicated:
curl http://whatever.com/scriptyouwant.js > scriptyouwant.js
Wow, that was hard, wasn't it? It's shit like this that ensures I will never ever donate to the FSF. Morons.
Monstar L
Does this downloaded copy of the JS code come with a license that secures the four essential freedoms to users? Usually it doesn't unless you're on GNU.org or a MediaWiki site.
Like free beer?
Inspiration is ok with me, but why should anybody be entitled to copy your work? :)
Make sure you obfuscate (using your own copyrighted algorithms (that has been obfuscated (using your own copyrighted algorithms (that has been obfuscated (using your own copyrighted algorithms (that has been obfuscated (using your own copyrighted algorithms (that has been obfuscated (using your own copyrighted algorithms (that has been obfuscated (using your own copyrighted algorithms (that has been (you got it!))) or brainfucked)) or brainfucked)) or brainfucked)) or brainfucked)) or brainfucked)) or brainfuck your code.
And remember to add a copyright notice at the top
If they were alive today, does anyone here honestly think that Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin or any of our other intelligent founding fathers would trust the government enough to allow the government's active scripting to run on their computers? Maybe with a live distro cd, changed Mac address, someone else's connection and chained proxies maybe.
Cancer!
Yeah, just being free doesnt make it not suck....
What meaningful freedom? You can't easily take the source, modify it significantly and use it on the site no matter what license they give you. Yeah, you can hack your own library into the page, but who really cares at all about whatever insignificant javascript the government is using to validate their form. I can kind of see making some kind of fuss about obfuscated javascript (because then it's hard to know what your computer is about to do, if you're the paranoid type), but most javascript is only obfuscated by being poorly written. Either that, or it's condensed for very practical reasons of bandwidth conservation.
I can live with copyrighted Javascript. It's obfusicated Javascript that looks like hostile code that I object to.
Have you looked at Google's home page lately? For a page that appears to do almost nothing, there's a vast amount of obfusicated Javascript involved. Some of it:
(function(){ window.google={kEI:"a62mUcucJYHQiwKgx4DwDw",getEI:function(a){for(var b;a&&(!a.getAttribute||!(b=a.getAttribute("eid")));)a=a.parentNode;return b||google.kEI},https:function(){return"https:"==window.location.protocol},kEXPI:"17259,4000116,4001351,4001947,4003714,4003921,4004320,4004334,4004702,4004788,4004844,4004897,4004943,4004949,4004953,4004971,4005031,4005198,4005731,4005817,4005987,4006191,4006374,4006426,4006442,4006448,4006466,4006541,4006578,4006727,4006806,4006974,4007007,4007009,4007020,4007040,4007055,4007060,4007073,4007077,4007080,4007117,4007118,4007131,4007140,4007158,4007217,4007231", kCSI:{e:"17259,4000116,4001351,4001947,4003714,4003921,4004320,4004334,4004702,4004788,4004844,4004897,4004943,4004949,4004953,4004971,4005031,4005198,4005731,4005817,4005987,4006191,4006374,4006426,4006442,4006448,4006466,4006541,4006578,4006727,4006806,4006974,4007007,4007009,4007020,4007040,4007055,4007060,4007073,4007077,4007080,4007117,4007118,4007131,4007140,4007158,4007217,4007231", ei:"a62mUcucJYHQiwKgx4DwDw"},authuser:0,ml:function(){}, kHL:"en",time:function() {return(new Date).getTime()},log:function(a,b,c,h){var d=new Image,f=google.lc,e=google.li,g="";d.onerror=d.onload=d.onabort=function() {delete f[e]};f[e]=d;!c&&-1==b.search("&ei=")&&(g="&ei="+google.getEI(h));c=c||"/gen_204?atyp=i&ct="+a+"&cad="+b+g+"&zx="+google.time();a=/^http:/i; a.test(c)&&google.https()?(google.ml(Error("GLMM"),!1,{src:c}),delete f[e]):(d.src=c,google.li=e+1)},lc:[],li:0,j:{en:1,b:!!location.hash&&!!location.hash.match("[#&]((q|fp)=|tbs=simg|tbs=sbi)"),bv:21,cf:"",pm:"p",u:"c9c918f0"},Toolbelt:{},y:{},x:function(a,b){google.y[a.id]=[a,b];return!1},load:function(a,b){google.x({id:a+k++},function(){google.load(a,b)})}};var k=0;window.onpopstate=function(){google.j.psc=1}; window.chrome||(window.chrome={});window.chrome.sv=2.00;window.chrome.searchBox||(window.chrome.searchBox={});window.chrome.searchBox.onsubmit=function(){google.x({id:"psyapi"},function(){var a=encodeURIComponent(window.chrome.searchBox.value);google.nav.search({q:a,sourceid:"chrome-psyapi2"})})};})(); (function(){var d=!1;google.sn="webhp";google.timers={};google.startTick=function(a,b){google.timers[a]={t:{start:google.time()},bfr:!!b}};google.tick=function(a,b,h){google.timers[a]||google.startTick(a);google.timers[a].t[b]=h||google.time()};google.startTick("load",!0); try{google.pt=window.gtbExternal&&window.gtbExternal.pageT();}catch(e){}})();
Google's home page was once just HTML with a form. It did about what it does now.
I really wonder if RMS feels able to use a microwave oven. Hrm, maybe he found one from the 70's with a mechanical dial timer and no firmware?
Although I fail to understand why that would be more ethical than having a modern microwave that does have firmware. Why is it okay to not have firmware, but not okay to have firmware unless you have source code? Even if the firmware is so trivial that all it gives you is a power setting and a countdown timer?
Not trolling here; I think this really is a logical conclusion from RMS's public pronouncements. He has publicly denounced the use of any network interface that allows the user to download firmware as a binary blob, unless the full source code for that firmware is available under a license approved by him.
Hang on, he hasn't denounced network interfaces with non-updateable firmware... has he? Maybe he just hasn't got around to that yet.
But never mind; he has denounced Tivo for making an appliance that doesn't allow the user to install any code the user chooses. So I'm pretty sure a microwave would be a problem for him.
Likewise, modern cars have engine computers, so he probably has to drive a car from the 70's or so. Hrm, actually I think he doesn't own a car. I wonder if he is uncomfortable riding in modern cars.
Really I'm glad I'm not RMS.
Who cares what license the javascript has underneath a page that I happen to visit? As long as it runs. It's not like I have to install some evil proprietary flash or java applet to run it. Get a life, FSF!
I have built maybe 30 Javascript heavy websites and not once did I use anything but free Javascript. Not out of any philosophical bent but just that there is so much awesome free Javascript out there in so many forms. Occasionally I stumble on some library where they want money but 5 seconds later I find something free that makes me go oooooh. Or I build it myself.
So instead of going on and on about how much of a waste of time this is I'll suggest a few campaigns of more importance: Better freedom of information acts. Less stupid patent laws. Less stupid copywrite laws. Better privacy regulations severely limiting what data governments and corporations can gather. Better built in security into nearly everything I use so that people can't backdoor their way into my data (i.e. no backdoors into things like Skype). To name just a few of the 100 million more important causes out there.
I visited the site (regulations.gov) that they were all hot and bothered about using Firefox, which contains a free Javascript engine (in fact, all of Firefox is free!) and it worked fine. No requirement for a proprietary version of Javascript at all! This article may be confusing Javascript with ActiveX, but that site doesn't even require ActiveX! I'm not even aware of a non-free version of Javascript. There may be some proprietary extensions to the language that Internet Explorer uses, but the vast majority of sites I visit work just fine with Firefox.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
Did you know that the Internets are not free? The wires, the airwaves, the electrons, the content, the everything in it are all controlled by proprietary organizations that want YOU to give up your rights.
We at the FIF (Free Internet Foundation) want that to change. So next week, we will boycott the Internet until it's free. That's right, until every part of the Internet is free (and that's free as in unencumbered, not free as in beer) we will refuse to use it.
The boycott starts 6/1! Mark your paper calendars everyone! The revolution starts soon!
...how about NO javascript unless it actually adds some sort of actual value to a site. When I have to set up special NoScript permissions just to fucking CLICK A GODDAMN LINK, there's something very wrong with the site coder's brain.
No, because your talking about two non-analogous things. "Non-free JS" is nothing like requiring a specific OS.
No, because the problem you're describing is no way related to what TFA is talking about.
You're talking about requiring a certain environment for the page to work.
They're talking about the javascript on the page being licensed to you in a certain way, which has no bearing whatsoever on if it actually works or not.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
I'm sacrificing my freedom by loading a webpage that is going to run some code which I can look at with any text editor and see exactly what it's doing (though I may need to de-minify it first)?
Honestly, if that is the biggest threat to my freedom these days, we're in much better shape than I thought!
TFA in this case is surprisingly difficult to understand. It reads like it's aimed at the converted, and the rest of us who are more concerned with "does the site work?" and "are there security concerns?" aren't invited. Either that or I'm really missing something, because I can't fathom why in a million years I would ever care in the slightest about this.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
I can't just rape and pillage every site I want for javascript snippets and samples. I have to read the license for the code first.
Just think how much easier it would be if everything were GPL'd. Then nobody would own anything. Or get paid.
(Yes, I release my code under GPLv3 and LGPL, but that's because I want to, not because I expect everyone else to!)
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
How? Do they even know how the webpages work? We would basically have the web of 1995 in all its slow, clunky awfulness.
You want a web without JavaScript? Go right ahead and make a viable open source alternative that offers the same facility.
So I read Stallman's article and am not quite certain that it is completely accurate. I've written a decent amount of JavaScript code, and all of it was built into HTML pages, even if some of it used AJAX to interact with PHP code on the Web Server. It has always seemed to me that that the entirety of the JavaScript code was right there for the user to inspect with a browser's "View Source" option, regardless of whether or not the overall web page was copyrighted. Well, at least it is easy to view the code that doesn't get loaded in a separate ".js" file; you need to use a browser's Developer Tools to access the "include" stuff. I am of course aware that there exists Server-Side JavaScript, and when it is used that code does not get sent to the browser. However, since it runs on the Server, not even Stallman can complain that the user who connected to the Server is being asked/required to run that non-free JavaScript code (But obviously if the web page is copyrighted, it may qualify as including non-free JavaScript code.)
Accuracy aside, there is a different issue that is personally bothersome. I'm a good programmer and have been writing code for a long time, working with a variety of languages --I have actually enjoyed Assembly Language; many can't say that! But I haven't been able to find a "best fit" type of job that lasted more than a few years, and so my income-situation is not the best (nor even remotely near to "the best"). I'm sure it is quite easy for someone who has a decent steady income to write and give away software. But when you need to sell it to put food on the table, copyright is supposed to be an author's friend. As an example, suppose I put a few years of effort into creating a nice unique web site, free for users and paid for by advertisers. Do I want that unique-ness to be copied immediately, all across the Internet, and my ad-revenue proportionately diluted, by giving away the source code? What do I deserve to earn, financially speaking, for those years of effort? Remember the children's tale of the Little Red Hen? The assumption behind Free Software is that what you offer will get improved and come back to you, thereby benefitting you. It ignores the fact that that process takes time that you might not be able to afford!
So, what is the Answer to that conundrum, besides "Obtain the nice-income job that lets you afford to give away software"?
whereas you guys are outdated and invalid tools
how about dump the fucking javascript completely... the web should be navigable and usable without scripting. some apps need it (e.g. a web-based word processor, for instance), but virtually ALL web sites could do without.... resulting in a cleaner, faster-loading web for everybody.
What the fuck. Serious You Guys. What the fuck. This is sooooo fucking dumb. Fuck Stallman and fuck the GPL. Stupid fuckers don't understand simplicity and elegance. They only know fuck-wit.
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.
The real question we should be asking ourselves is why is there so much redundant JavaScript libraries out there? Date Pickers, Fancy Dialog Boxes, Slideshows, Accordion Components, Menus, Widgets, etc all use JavaScript. How come the HTML standard has not implemented these common components?
Whatever it was, that gave you the right to demand a copyright on the code that you released to the world, saying that governments should use force against people to deter them from doing certain things with the code that you sent to them.
If you're saying these rights to demand things don't exist, then perhaps you've got a good point. A couple hundred years ago, though, a bunch of people got together and disagreed, and said they would empower government with making laws related to this topic. And for good or ill, you live under the power of that government.
Not a natural right? Fair enough. I totally agree that outside of civilization, it really is silly for some random stranger to get in your face and say you somehow owe them a special favor. I'd tell 'em to fuck off.
But that's not what's being discussed. You've opted into a special deal above and beyond natural rights, where you want a special favor (monopoly protection at taxpayer expense). And in exchange for this privilege, you offer .. what? (Oh, you're too good for quid-pro-quo? If so, then maybe I'm too good for that too. And if that's so, then say goodbye to copyright.)
I think RMS' campaign here, is to point out that imbalance, and he's not really trying to persuade most webmasters to show js licensing info. He's trying to get people to demand their government restore balance to copyright. Pushing a .gov website on the issue, is just an illustration.
Furthermore, beyond imbalance, there's a weirder thing going on. It wasn't that long ago that laymen thought of the web itself as being incompatible with copyright. The idea was that if your server is transmitting information to me, it's silly to think that the law considers that data possibly copyrighted (though of course our ancient outdated laws do). How can I be infringing copyright by copying the data from your computer to mine, when you willfully helped me do that? Imagine going up to a 1770s book printer, asking for a copy of his book, and instead of him selling it to you, he helped you print a fresh copy, handed it over free of charge, and then yelled "copyright infringement!!" You'd shoot him in the face, and the crowd would high-five you afterwards. Good riddance to crazy printer.
You say people can decide to use your minified js or not, their choice. But what they don't have a choice about, is that if they decide to download the js (let alone execute it) the government has already taken a stand that technically that's copyright infringement, unless you allow it. And your act of putting it on your server and telling your server to transmit it to anyone who asks, without authentication, strongly suggests that you do allow it.
You know what all this talk about allowing things really means? A license. You've already implicitly granted a license when you shared your code with the world. So why keep things implicit? Why are we still thinking in terms of your server's behavior "strongly suggesting" some nubulous thing where we're all going to disagree over the nits? Are you TRYING to "create jobs" for the lawyers? FSF is pointing out how ridiculous this is, and how everyone would benefit if the sharing itself caused the work to legally change status in a deeper way. Maybe your minified js should automatically become PD through your act of offering it freely. As a compromise, I'm sure they'd advocate that GPL would make a great default license, if having the work go PD is "too far." ;-)
This is not a private entity -- government services should be available to everyone without a requirement to purchase "widget A from coporation M". Until that becomes a rule -- FSF is doing a very good job.
I really like this idea.
I don't.
It has one great flaw - in order to do like FSF asks and fill out the form on regulation.gov, we have to use a browser with non-free JavaScript.
So in essence, RMS asks us to use non-free JavaScript!?
It's this kind of misguided fanaticism by the FSF that makes hairyfeet despise the greater Linux community and ruin any chance of demonstrating that yes, there are some Linux users who are actually reasonable humans.
The FSF is like the PETA of the technology world. It's run by a bunch of crazy kooks who don't live in the same reality as everyone else. They're so nuts that even the open-source movement prefers to keep its distance, because the last thing you need when promoting a positive thing is a bunch of angry neckbeards screaming at people about how they're ignorant and taking everyone's freedom just because they like using a Windows PC sometimes.
Let's ignore the whole copyright issue of EVERYTHING else on the website. The CSS, the HTML, the words, and so on. The article talks about "it prevents people from understanding, modifying and building on the programs they are running" Well no it doesn't. Other than it being copyrighted. People could still understand it, modify it... But legally you can't run it, just like you can't take the text or the images and stick them on your page. Or is Richard suggesting we should do that as well?
I use it all the time. Very few sites are allowed to run javascript at all.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
That doesn't make sense to me. Of course JS code, HTML, text, images, movies, etc. will be copyrighted. It's just a communication medium. Just because it is relatively new and the InTeRnEt doesn't mean it should all be an open collaboration with everything given away by default. Demanding 'free' Javascript is a bad message, imho. It gives the sense that it should all be free and therefore it might even be ethical to steal.
Don't get me wrong, I was a Linux kernel contributor for several years and I've released my own projects under L/GPL. But, I'm also a commercial programmer who knows the importance of keeping proprietary code protected. I don't find the two in conflict. I'm even on the fence for thinking a semi-standarized web DRM might not be a bad thing.
Part of my distaste on the matter stems from students who email me about a few papers I posted on the web while in college. Several blatantly told me they are going to submit my paper with their name at the top but just wanted a few clarifications in case their prof asked them any questions. Pissed the hell out of me. It was completely lost on some that that was stealing, plagiarism, and cheating. The web isn't all public domain and it wasn't meant to be and it shouldn't be or else it would become a very dull desert wasteland.
The FSF has recently released an article condemning matter in general. The first target is the periodic table of elements, "Matter is simply too hard to understand, I mean you can't see it, first of all," says some idiot. You expect people to sacrifice their freedom by using a non-free microscope?
Whatever it was, that gave you the right to demand a copyright on the code that you released to the world
no, the 'whatever it was' (so you obviously don't know) that gave us copyright did *not* give you the right to demand a license.
But that's not what's being discussed. You've opted into a special deal above and beyond natural rights, where you want a special favor (monopoly protection at taxpayer expense).
yep and if you provide something worthwhile you get that too.
Pushing a .gov website on the issue, is just an illustration.
nobody is forcing you to use the internet and certainly not from your own computer if you don't want to run that code on your computer then run it on a public computer in a public library instead.
Imagine going up to a 1770s book printer, asking for a copy of his book, and instead of him selling it to you, he helped you print a fresh copy, handed it over free of charge, and then yelled "copyright infringement!!" You'd shoot him in the face, and the crowd would high-five you afterwards. Good riddance to crazy printer.
then go back to printing books. oh you don't want to, no you only want to reap the benefits.
But what they don't have a choice about, is that if they decide to download the js (let alone execute it) the government has already taken a stand that technically that's copyright infringement
wrong, obviously.
And your act of putting it on your server and telling your server to transmit it to anyone who asks, without authentication, strongly suggests that you do allow it.
and your post strongly suggest you're the person that should be sterilized, so i guess i have the right to do that.
You know what all this talk about allowing things really means? A license. You've already implicitly granted a license when you shared your code with the world. So why keep things implicit? Why are we still thinking in terms of your server's behavior "strongly suggesting" some nubulous thing where we're all going to disagree over the nits? Are you TRYING to "create jobs" for the lawyers? FSF is pointing out how ridiculous this is, and how everyone would benefit if the sharing itself caused the work to legally change status in a deeper way.
then do that, live in that world and restrict yourself to only that ideology, but you won't, you don't want to. the system as it stands has benefited you greatly and even though you *could* abandon it and actually practice what you preach you won't, you don't believe in your ideology that much do you?
Having "non-free JavaScript" on a site seems no different to me than reading materials that are copyrighted. Does Stallman not read anything that's copyrighted? What's the problem with that? I just don't see the negative effect here.
I'd welcome legislation that requires that web developers that can't figure out how to display some text and images using straight HTML be shot in the face, or at least prohibited from developing any more web sites. Repost and repaint, and work with every web browser written since 1998.
If website owners want to copyright the JS they use on the website and want to think of the website as a SOFTWARE not just CONTENT, then they have to give me the LICENCE FIRST, before I enter the website, and ask me to accept it!
Law requires this, and this is fair.
Currently no JS should be considered software, but just part of the content.
What Stallman and the FSF are complaining about is bone standard ECMAscript, nothing proprietary about it. Minification is done by web administrators to conserve bandwidth and make their pages load faster. Stallman deliberately used a loaded term to paint this like it's worse than it is. If he'd just come out and said "People need to use more readable javascript" he'd look like an idiot So he fudged things a bit, coined a new phrase which if you read it literally doesn't make sense, then wrote a big essay about it. What's next, is he going to ban PERL because no-one can read it? Is everyone going to be required to use Python because it's the most readable language?
If the server ran ActiveScript or Flash, I could see getting excited, but it's just minified javascript. This is the problem, were Stallman to describe minified code to most people they wouldn't see the 'evil' in it. So he invented a new phrase to try and make the rest of the planet see things the way he does.
What crack have you been smoking? IE is STILL used by the majority.
yeah, but does he go to websites that he doesn't have the source for? (no, "view source" doesn't count)
Bollix... next..
The article specifically talks about government websites, I can see if I already paid for it through taxes, then why should not be able to modify it and run in my browser on my machine as I see fit ?
This isn't related to copyright, you aren't distributing the code by running the code in your own browser on your machine.
New things are always on the horizon
FAFSA does not require IE. It throws big scary warnings about browser incompatibility at the user, but it does not stop you from continuing in Firefox or Chrome. I filed FAFSA from 2006-2009 in not-IE without issue.
Also, you cannot change the code on the server(sort of, if you intercept calls at the browser level you could)
There already exist tools to "intercept calls at the browser level", such as Greasemonkey. Non-free licensing of JavaScript code prohibits end users from sharing their improvements with other users of Greasemonkey.
If we had a choice to use the web site without the script that "the author licensed [...] that way", it'd be fine. But a lot of pages that use non-free JavaScript won't work at all with script off.
Javascript can certainly cause a lot of problems, but none of them are really related to it being non-free. Sticking a GPL on top of the Javascript code doesn't really solve anything. It doesn't make webpages more accessible or machine readable, it doesn't make it load faster, it doesn't make it run faster and it doesn't even make it easier to modify. If the server starts to ship on updated Javascript my Greasemonkey scripts would break just the same no matter if the Javascript is GPL or not. Lots of the time the Javascript code isn't even code that does something interesting, but just used for transition animations and such because CSS3 is not yet ready for widespread use.
I think the FSF should better spend their time on advocating good web practices, encourage people to provide APIs for their websites, make sure that data can be important and exported from the cloud and such. If it's Free Software or not doesn't really matter, as while it runs on your computer, you don't really control it either way, as it all depends on what kind of data the server ships to you. If the data format from the server changes, all your Free Software Javascript would be rendered useless.
Posting AC because I'm modding...
There is no objection to using minimized and obfuscated JS; the real issue not being able to consent to running code since the JavaScript is "unreadable" and proprietary.
If you read TFA, you will notice a link to The JavaScript Trap. In Appendix A, it encourages a convention for releasing obfuscated code:
As a JavaScript developer, this is a no-brainer for me.
Makes perfect sense...
To 99% of the population, those warnings are equivalent to IE only.
Wasn't this the whole reason w3 was formed?
Forgive me if I post comments covered better by smarter people but I have just spent the past hour pacing in the hallway after reading this.
My initial reaction was "Non-free JavaScript? RMS must have glaucoma because his herbal remedy is really impacting his judgement". JavaScript is open source. As a computer security duck I can tell you that JavaScript is easily altered on any page you visit, and only a fool would license their JavaScript code... or worse "open source" it like Al Gore did to his web page just before we found out what a "chad" was. Calling a set of JavaScript code "closed source" is similar to closing the source on a batch file or shell script, or trademarking/copyrighting an arrangement of flowers or dead bees. It is possible to lay claim to such a "design" but as to how it could be enforced is beyond me.
Then I read some comments and people seemed to think this had to do with the readability of the JavaScript as "minified" JavaScript is too obfuscated to read by a lay person (by lay person I mean non-JS compiler). But this is silly as many plugins that allow you to alter the JavaScript you run on your browser when you visit a page will also easily de-obfuscate the JavaScript. So readability is more about presentation and the presentation can be trivially altered.
But, I have come to peace with the basis of the article, that there exists something called "non-free JavaScript" and that pages can implement such a thing. Here is how one can implement Non-Free JavaScript, if you use a JS library such as Sencha ExtJS (with the commercial license) and offer no alternate HTML only page. Sencha ExtJS with the commercial license is not GPL, so the license is not "free". And with the lack of an HTML page (where you kill off your search engines and section 508 ADA usability compliance), then RMS can't use the page in the pristine "free" form he desires as a nutty free software advocate.
This issue is a lot like having a "death and murder-free dinner party" for insane vegans. Normal people would be happy to throw a burger on the grill and drink some beer but people like RMS would amplify decisions like eating meat kills everything and hurts the environment and that beer prevents kids in Iceland from learning to read (with a 2 hour explanation as to why). Why can't the FSF install Firefox and use the web the way a given developer intended is beyond me. People who block JavaScript are jerks and people who block ads are theives. If you don't like a given web page, don't go there. The rest of us are sick of hearing you old coots yelling "get off my lawn", or more accurately quoting Sheldon "you are in my spot". Take some lithium and enjoy 2013.
And nobody's forcing you to publish your code on the web. You chose to enter a regulated system, a situation where common-sense terms such as "rights" and "forcing" have pretty much been abandoned, and replaced with laws instead.
It's a system where Congress already gave into society's demand that music be "compulsorily licensed" and 100% of voters (I bet you're one of them) went along and gave their support. (Or have you been putting your money where you mouth is, and getting Republican and Democrats gradually rotated out of government, replaced with libertarians who ran on the platform of repealing these compulsory licenses?)
Those laws are deliberately intended to infringe peoples' rights for a higher or pragmatic purpose (just like how the constitution takes away your right to run your own post office, mint your own coins, or form your own army): to promote the progress of arts and sciences. Those laws are also always subject to analysis and are negotiable. If you want to go back to an anarchic situation where people have to always think about what they're getting into and whether or not they're "forced" into a transaction, then get to work on enacting amendments to repeal the stuff in Article 1 Section 8. (I have a lot of sympathy for that point of view and sometimes serve it. But I tend to agree that the founders had the right idea in the 1770s and that copyright is not too radically leftist.)
Nobody forced you to use the US Mail to send a non-parcel letter, but that doesn't mean you don't have the right to petition Congress to adjust the terms of their right to the postal service which the constitution took away from you. Same for copyright. Nobody forced you into the deal of copyright; you could have kept your code a trade secret.
BTW, I do produce things; I write code for a living and have done so for decades. And I realize that the special privileges that society gives me (using its government), come with some give'n'take.
When I ask the government to point a gun at someone's face and I say "don't let them do this certain thing with the code that I wrote," I fully expect a benign government to at least question my demand, or have certain terms and limits for both my demand and the prohibition that I expect them to inflict upon another person. That's why my code becomes Public Domain in 90 years, why some types of violations of the prohibitions can be excused (Fair Use), etc. And when I set up a situation, where *I* know ahead of time that lots of web browsers are going to automatically download and execute my copyrighted code, I'm aware that calling this downloading "copyright infringement" is silly, even if technically correct by the letter of the law.
You don't have that awareness? (Really? That's weird if true; it means you're neither an anarchist nor a statist or anywhere in between.)
And if the copying (!) shouldn't be copyright infringement, then maybe lots of other things shouldn't be infringement too. That's the price I pay for publishing my code for free and telling my server to give out to the code to anyone and everyone who asks. If I wanted all my "rights" reserved, then I should have really chosen to reserve them, instead of setting things in motion for automatic infringement.
..the same exact thing. Their site won't work unless you download and execute their proprietary javascript, thereby creating a specific environment within your browser.
A more careful (and slightly more believable as well) analogy would be that the municipal government's site only works with MSIE 6 running on Windows XP, but they do have a download link to a free-as-in-beer VM image which contains that software (And they expect everyone to use that VM, even people who already have Windows.) You're apparently allowed to click the link and use the VM image, but what exactly you're really allowed to do with it, is murky unless you research it.
Lawyers working at FSF looked into it, and found out that you're not allowed to improve, repair, or otherwise maintain this code which is required to use this taxpayer-funded government service. If it has a bug (or malicious bit) which happens to exploit your VM containment, then sucks-to-be-you: your only two legal recourses are 1) to fix your VM instead of removing the exploit itself, and just live with the hostile code constantly probing your containment. [and I'll admit that's a good idea nevertheless.] 2) Or completely replace the entire environment (what Berkeley did to AT&T's Unix) since you aren't allowed to create derived works ; make your custom WINE environment do whatever is needed to interoperate with the government's service. If that means implementing some MSIE6 bugs, so be it.
And on the topic of whether or not Microsoft and Adobe have actually consented to you downloading and using that VM, the lawyers can't even find a solid answer (Microsoft and the webmaster probably did negotiate some kind of license, but neither of them ever happened to tell you anything about it) so the lawyers are tempted to assume that copyright law prohibits you using the VM. If Microsoft ever did happen to sue you over it, could you prove you were allowed to copy that VM?
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
This is another one of those RMS things which really does seem pretty nitpicky and impractical, at the time it's written but history shows that whenever you later look back, RMS is almost always right.
Javascript is so transient, so unimportant, and so close to the blurry line between code and content (though I'm surprised to be reading so many opinions here which are placing it on the "content" side). Our browsers are getting pretty decent at sandboxing these days, so the consequences of running unmaintainable and unauditable code within them, seem light. Who really needs maintainance for code that you only use for a few seconds and then throw away?
But it's creep. Unless I have my browser only run Javascript from whitelists, the "normal" operation is that it's doing something (running all kind of crazy proprietary stuff) that, outside the browser, just doesn't happen. My machines aren't are "pure" as RMS' machines but even so, there are really only so many places where I still have unmaintainable and unauditable code. The browser multiplies that by thousands.
It's funny; I normally don't go adding thousands of proprietary PPAs to my Ubuntu machine, and tend to be pretty conservative about what I allow to be installed. Yet my browser still isn't using a whitelist for Javascript. That's not entirely sane or consistent, is it? No matter where you stand on the Free vs proprietary spectrum, you get to call me a hypocrite. (Fortunately, I probably get to call you one right back -- unless you're as hardcore as RMS or as resigned as an iPhone user.)
They're individually inconsequential (I think!!), but I sure spend a lot of time in the browser. What's otherwise a fairly trustworthy machine, seems to be hanging by a thread: the browser's correct virtualization of the Javascript universe. If I'm really ok with that, then you'd think I'd also have some Windows or Mac OS X virtual machines around too, to further run more unmaintainable and unaudited code for my convenience. Why don't I? Maybe it's simply because doing that wouldn't really give me any more convenience. But maybe I'm inconsistent because I don't have my shit together, mentally.
I think there's a valid concern here, it's just hard to say it's important or what (if anything) to do about it. But I remember when "The Right to Read" pretty much got the same opinion from me.
As far as what to do about it, FSF's proposal seems pretty modest: don't have government actively making the creep deeper. We have enough to worry about without our own government putting us further at risk. Regulations.gov shouldn't be distributing a bunch of proprietary code to citizens; leave that sort of thing to commercial sites. Even if it's currently believed that the current version of that code is harmless (it wouldn't totally surprise me if some people have illegally(?) audited the Javscript), it's not a best practice, and outside of exceptional-because-we-don't-have-our-shit-together web it's something we normally wouldn't do or permit. If regulations.gov told you to download and execute regulations.exe or the iOS app as the only way for citizens to get some information from them, I'm sure plenty of people would be screaming. This is the same, but also different, by degrees. Whether it's two degrees or ten, though, I don't know...
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I specifically remember it not working, it is possible that they simply blocked functionality for non-IE browsers. Obviously your mileage may vary.
When I was on unemployment, the state of Oklahoma's unemployment website thing actively prevents you from using anything but IE 7 and below. (IE8 didn't work, IE9 was still in beta at the time). The way I solved it was using a user agent switcher with Firefox. Everything worked as expected afterwards.
1) Even though ECMAScript is an official spec, Javascript with obfuscation is now "wrong". Even though its an interpreted language and not encrypted, the fact that it's not easy to debug it is wrong. That means all perl is wrong, cause you really can't read the code anyway. Nevermind the fact that single character member names help with bandwidth costs. You'll pay more, because, well, Stallman says.
2) BSD is bad because of the license clause, adding a license was too unwieldy. Adding a license to FSF code somehow is ok, because, well, Stallman says.
Why is it the developers job to write code that a community can maintain? Javascript isn't a secret language so as a developer if I am writing something for my own personal site/use what incentive should I have to make it as easily readable to anyone and even make it editable? If anything I wish I could lock down some of my code more to keep people from copying it.
If we had a choice to use the web site without the script that "the author licensed [...] that way", it'd be fine. But a lot of pages that use non-free JavaScript won't work at all with script off.
Then don't view the website, you don't have the right to force them into your ideology. And if you must view it then do it on a computer other than your own.
I am using proprietary code in *my* website and I am certainly *not* paying for it because it doesnt cost anything.
My understanding is that greasemonkey adds scripts that modify the page, rather than modifying the incoming javascript, but I don't know much about how it works under the hood, perhaps I'm mistaken. Even so, there is nothing illegal about running greasemonkey or sharing greasemonkey scripts, is there? Which means that changing the license for the page's javascript doesn't add anything from a legal or practical standpoint.
If I browse to a website that executes proprietary code in my browser, non-free code is executed. But is this really any different than if I browse to a website that executes proprietary code on the SERVER? Does it matter which CPU runs the code?
--- wad
For a minute there I thought that there was a new technological invention called NonFreeJavascript. OK