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."

Comments

Gosh!!!

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

I never realized visiting a website required me to "sacrifice my freedom"!

Re:Gosh!!!

[hairyfeet]

I think we can all agree that the FSF reached PETA "sea kittens" levels of batshit when they came up with that anvilicious "Windows 7 sins"..sins...really? Are you the fricking pope now Snt IGNUcious?

To me this is the sad part of all this, it doesn't matter how good or noble a group's intentions are they ALWAYS end up being completely batshit if they exist for too long, from FSF and their ever crazier "causes for freedumb!" to PETA and the sea kittens to the head of MADD saying the ultimate goal was to bring back prohibition (yeah, like that worked so well LAST time) it never seems to fail that the batshit end up snatching the mike and making the whole thing a pathetic parody of itself.

Remember when the FSF was all about having choice instead of pushing their agenda, when the whole goal was to make sure there was always an alternative so you didn't HAVE to use proprietary if you didn't want to? Wasn't that nice, didn't they seem a hell of a lot less circle loopy in those days? why oh why must every single cause end up ruled by the completely loony tune?

Re:Gosh!!!

[siride]

Minified JavaScript is for convenience of transport. It's no different from compiled code, which GNU software happily produces.

Re:Gosh!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember when the FSF was all about having choice instead of pushing their agenda, when the whole goal was to make sure there was always an alternative so you didn't HAVE to use proprietary if you didn't want to? Wasn't that nice, didn't they seem a hell of a lot less circle loopy in those days? why oh why must every single cause end up ruled by the completely loony tune?

Firstly, Stallman founded the FSF and is still president of it.

Secondly, when was the FSF ever about choice? I think you may be confused with the Open Source Initiative (who have never actually accomplished anything of note interestingly enough); the FSF has been bluntly pushing the whole "proprietary software is immoral" ideology from the beginning, nothing has changed on that front. Why do you think they created the GPL instead of just using BSD 3-clause if they actually ever thought the way you seem to think they did?

Re:Gosh!!!

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

The FSF's position on javascript is perfectly consistent with their position on other software; because javascript is just software. It hardly seems surprising that they would be displeased that government-backed, your-tax-dollars-at-work sites would be relying on proprietary javascript.

Re:Gosh!!!

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It's also worth remembering to evaluate 'fananticism', and decide whether or not 'pragmatic' or 'realistic' are actually good things, in the context of all the players:

If Stallman were, by some cosmic quirk, made omnipotent dictator for life, the question of whether he is 'too fanatical' would start to matter a bit more. As it is, though, Stallman has zero coercive power over just about anybody, and isn't likely to obtain any more(if anything, the SFLC is pretty chill about litigating against even people who voluntarily placed themselves under the terms of the GPL by using GPLed code for some purpose or other, they could turn the screws harder than they do, and I'd take them over the BSA any day...) Be he ever so fanatical, his power is so limited(and so counter-balanced by deep pocketed and well-lawyered proprietary vendors) that his influence on you cannot be greater than, and may be less, than attempts at persuasion and voluntary offers.

Then there's the fact that, given the more or less continual pressure from people who see copyright maximalism and DRM as good for their bottom lines, 'pragmatic' compromising is likely to result in outcomes that converge, more or less swiftly, with those they originally stood against. If one side stands firm, and the other agree's to split the difference, you Zeno your way toward agreement within just a few rounds.

Re:Gosh!!!

[Cajun Hell]

a website should tell you if you're entitled to use something like Greasemonkey to replace their javascript with your own clean version

Why would I ever want some website's opinion about that? I wouldn't even trust a judge's website to correctly guess my decision in the matter of what code I allow my computer to run. Asking websites' opinions just implies they could possibly have a say (or even a vote) in the matter, which is of course completely preposterous.

Re:Gosh!!!

[b4dc0d3r]

If you did, you'd see that he has a perfectly valid point about how the effect of non-Free licenses, combined with minified (and therefore effectively unreadable) code

No. Free Software wants JavaScript to be readable, and understandable. This is a valid point, regardless of the language and the availability of the source code.

We cannot make readable C from a decompilation, mostly because of different compilers and different optimization levels. We can decompile Java and C#/VB.NET because there is one and only one VM or IL definition.

JavaScript minification is only about renaming variables. I can tell you there is only one thing in the way of understanding JavaScript minification. Two, if you include a generic text editor's lack of "replace word only" functionality.

You have to read the de-minified version, just like any other code. You have to read, or if your language is not the same as the author's, translate, the variable names, just like the original source code.

JavaScript as it runs in your browser is exactly the same as it runs interpreted, compiled, or in any other fashion. You have the freedom to block it, you have the freedom to modify it (GreaseMonky is just one of many), you have the freedom to read it, save it, or do whatever else you want. If it executes on your machine, I think the FSF would support any measure of scrutiny you wish to apply before, during, or after executing.

I have read "free" software source code, and found it no more intelligible than minified JavaScript. Some no more readable than a disassembly.

If you are going to object to minified JS, you also have to object to any code which is difficult to comprehend, and then you place a subjective quality on what is truly free. Firefox, to me, is no longer free software. I debugged just the installer for a bug report on ReactOS, and found piles of code which was misleading, in the most complimentary term. I offered to make a change to Doom, which took me 3 times as long as I thought, and ultimately failed to achieve, because the seemingly readable code was slightly obfuscated by the build process.

Either source code is enough, or it has to be readable. If we say readable, we have to define the least common denominator who should be able to read it. If we do that, it becomes a subjective criterion, and probably a moving target.

So here we are, at a crossroads. If a project produces the source code needed to build a complete, binary-perfect copy of their executable(s), but it was run through the C pre-processor, or C++ pre-processor, is that enough? It compiles, it builds with the version of tools the provider used... if you discount the pre-processor, it is effectively the original source code provided to the compiler. Is that enough?

JavaScript is what is provided to the interpreter - minified or not. Is that enough?

I say it is, and I disagree 100% with the FSF on this point. Named variables are nice, but they can be interpreted by the usage, if you are going to read the code.

If you are going to take an ideological stance and say "I don't understand this, therefore it is not enough", you are going to have to establish an objective baseline. I can understand optimized assembly, and some pure hex - is that free enough?

This is the opinion of someone who believes that source is provided for everything that executes, or is interpreted. Surely to fuck if you wrote a compiler, you can understand this. If you wrote an interpreter it is easier to understand.

If you don't understand anything else, think of JavaScript like Spanish. Lots of people understand it, most people don't. In this case, you don't. You are provided all instructions in Spanish. Is it more difficult to understand the instructions if given in Spanish? Of course. But I don't see the objection. Especially if you allow C programs written with Spanish, or French, or any other foreign language to be classified as free.

Let us support the FSF in making all software English only. Or we could just say GFY.

Re:Gosh!!!

[TheCRAIGGERS]

It seems you don't live in the USA. A place where, by modifying the source in your browser, you can be brought up on hacking charges, wire fraud, violating the DMCA, etc.

You ever actually read any of those TOS that you supposedly agree to the moment you navigate to a webpage?

Who cares about Javascript

[viperidaenz]

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.

It's not just the Javascript either...

[freezin fat guy]

What about all the non-free images and text taking away your rights?

Wake up people!111

WHAT popular perception?

[Dahamma]

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.

Re:Loons running the asylum

[ShanghaiBill]

So the FSF still seems to be able to find ways to make themselves more loony and fringe. Nice job guys!

Yes, this is pretty pathetic. There are plenty of areas where free software is very important, such as basic computing infrastructure like compilers, operating systems, networking, web standards, and audio/video decoders. But instead they are focusing on the script that makes text blink on some random website.

Re: Loons running the asylum

[Anonymous Coward]

Look this isn't quite so pathetic as you think. The accessibility tools on Linux often depend on running really old browsers on the console. First hand experience. We have upgraded them for ipv6 etc but working js is another matter.

Re:Stop obfusicated Javascript.

[antifoidulus]

You are aware of what minification is, right? Having nicely formatted javascript also means that you waste a lot of bandwidth sending all that format information that 99.99999999% of users will never look at. There are reverse-minification tools out there if you really want to look at the code.

Re:Loons running the asylum

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not that messed up. There are some really crazy javascript 'programs'. The code IS executing on your machine. If you say some stuff is "ok" if it is non-free and other stuff is not don't expect me to take you seriously. Just because you don't get the problem doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Are there bigger problems? Sure. But that isn't the job of the FSF. The job of the FSF is to promote freedom everywhere.

Not doing so would be hypocritical.

Say what?

[Tridus]

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.

Re:BIOS

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Ah yes, nothing says "freedom" like buying a product from the Chinese government.

When your options are a Chinese-OEMed shitbox whose guts are guarded by American lawyers, or a Chinese-OEMed shitbox whose guts aren't guarded by American lawyers...