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No One Should Have To Use Proprietary Software To Communicate With Their Government (fsf.org)
Donald Robertson, writing for Free Software Foundation: Proprietary JavaScript is a threat to all users on the Web. When minified, the code can hide all sorts of nasty items, like spyware and other security risks. [...] On March 1st, 2016, the Copyright Office announced a call for comments on an update to their technology infrastructure. We submitted a comment urging them to institute a policy that requires all software they develop and distribute to be free software. Further, we also urged them to not require people to run proprietary software in order to communicate or submit comments to them. Unfortunately, once again, the Copyright Office requires the use of proprietary JavaScript in order to submit the comment and they are only accepting comments online unless a person lacks computer or Internet access. [...] The most absurd part of all this is that other government agencies, while still using Regulations.gov, are perfectly capable of offering alternatives to submission.
Which company owns JavaScript? It's not Oracle, Microsoft, or Apple.
This seems to be a case of completely misplaced priorities. The goal should be that the customer/visitor not have to install or use non-free software (such as MS Office, Edge Browser, Acrobat, etc), not the libraries used to render the government website. It might make perfect sense for the government to use non-free software to develop a site, such as their choice of database, OS, etc. Why worry about which javascript libraries are used if they work across all browsers? This seems like something that should be 34,500th on the list of priorities when it comes to the Federal Government's IT priorities.
Oh yeah, and brink back the BLINK Tag as well!
But effectively.
Don't step on the baby.
No One Should Have To Use Proprietary Software To Communicate With Their Government
You mean TurboTax?
Last year (2014), I had to download Adobe Acrobat to submit a form to the US Treasury dept. The only way you could do this was Acrobat, it used PDF and Adobe proprietary form submission. (I couldn't use Apple Preview.app to fill out the form.)
This year (2015), Treasury added the obvious alternative, a fully on-line Web form. I guess that's progress.
I reject your government.
Propriety JavaScript... REALLY?!
Runs completely in the browser, you download and interpret the plain source code. But because it's minified it's suddenly proprietary? ("we could call Obfuscript because it has no comments and hardly any whitespace, and the method names are one letter long")? I think I can find hundreds of 'free' programs that are not commented and are equally readable as a minified javascript file.
Thanks to JavaScript we actually do download the source code. I don't know what the web would look like if vba, flash or java had gotten the upper hand. This only goes to show how out of touch with life they are at the fsf.
No One Should Have To Use Proprietary Software To Communicate With Their Government
You mean TurboTax?
I'd argue it is not normal either. Though in that case, you still can file manually.
I am not too happy about them making the case that the javascript library is proprietary. There are bigger fight to pick about software freedom without picking the ones that look borderline to many people.
That's not a stretch. Informational sites can do without it fine. Prove me otherwise.
"The Copyright Office requires the use of proprietary JavaScript in order to submit the comment and they are only accepting comments online unless a person lacks computer or Internet access."
I'm sorry, but that collection of words makes no sense. If I lack "computer or Internet access" how the hell am I supposed to send comments online?
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Doesn't http://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/no-one-should-have-to-use-proprietary-software-to-communicate-with-government use javascript as well?
Looking at stuff from the federal courts is a crapshoot. Some circuits (and the Supreme Court) offer some of their decisions for free via PDF files, but if you want access to everything you have to pay for it. Many states and local government have contracted out their court decisions and codes to private companies which make you pay for it; if free access is possible, it's poorly done and usually has only limited search capability if any. So if you want access to your government in the US, be prepared to pay, use proprietary software, or hire a lawyer who of course has all that access and charges you a markup for it. While I applaud FSF for taking on the Copyright people, it's sort of Don Quixoteish at this point.
Nobody is forcing you to. There's this thing called mail where you write something and send it.
They're complaining about minified JavaScript. Please shut up.
If you don't like it, go get browsers to fully implement XForms and then we won't need JavaScript backed forms. Or ask everyone to also host their debug symbols for the minified code, but don't go demanding everyone goes back to non-client side input validated forms. Web page bloat, data mining, and crazy JavaScript usage is a problem, but dropping to dumb fields isn't the solution.
Tax forms used to be found at every post office and library in the 80s... now with TurboTax so cheap (and free to some users) there isn't much need for that anymore. Obscure forms exist, and are downloaded by TurboTax when you indicate you're in that kind of situation.
Yep, you need Windows or Mac to run TurboTax's download... how does a Linux-only user fill out their taxes?
HTML is considered a cultural work, not computer program. Free Software Foundation is not as adamant about cultural works being free as it is about computer programs and their manuals being free. For example, its own license list recommends publication of opinion works under CC BY-ND, a license that is non-free because it prohibits derivative works.
Even if it weren't minified, is the script licensed in a way that permits you to make and share your improvements?
What is really annoying is that the US patent and trademark office (USPTO) still requires many of its users to use browsers running Java (not Javascript) for many applications. These days, that means running either Firefox or IE (classic). Persons using iOS or Android are out of luck.
JavaScript is not the problem; proprietary JavaScript is. The JavaScript fragment in the cited document is distributed under GPLv3, a free software license. It loads Piwik, which is distributed under a 3-clause BSD license, which is also a free software license.
Sure, minimized JavaScript is hard to decipher, but it's still easier to read than your average Perl program!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
They're complaining about minified JavaScript. Please shut up.
That's not the complaint. A minified script is an "executable", and FSF has no problem with a minified script that has a comment at the top linking to its source code and stating a free software license. The complaint is about a minified script that offers no source code or prohibits users from sharing improvements to it.
Or ask everyone to also host their debug symbols for the minified code
If debug symbols let the user derive source code (defined in GPLv2 and v3 as "the preferred form of a program for making modifications to it") from a minified script, and users know that they are permitted to make and share improvements to the script, FSF has no problem with it.
I work at the local county IT department, our health and human services department has to use multiple state websites that only support Internet Explorer 11 and Java 8+, and the same users have to use different state websites that only support IE9 and Java 6.21 or lower, it's a real fucking nightmare having to essentially support two VMs per user because different IE versions can't coexist.
HTML is not executable code that is run on the users computer. JavaScript and really this issue is that more complex programs written in JavaScript are required to be run on the end-users computer. While it would be nice if the government only utilized free software on the server that is NOT what this issue is about. Nor is it about what licenses are used for the output/HTML.
This is a relatively small, but none-the-less important gripe that we should all have who care about software freedoms.
There's a reasonable level of expectation of technology that people are gradually pushed to use, whether it's proprietary or not. When something becomes so common that everyone has relatively barrier-free and low-cost access to it, you've got to give in even if you're the government or providing a public service.
We might as well take the truly principled stand and object that interacting with the government requires having telephone service (!), paying for postage stamps (!), or paying for the bus to get to city hall (!).
As for 'having to use Acrobat' - do you mean the FREE Adobe Reader that Adobe has spent their own money on to help make it work for folks like you? You could also have gone with FoxIT, tools from Global Graphics (who developed Microsoft's ill fated XPS system), or any one of a number of other free PDF tools that would allow you to fill out and save a PDF based form.
By "free", do you mean merely "without charge", or do you mean "giving users the right and ability to make and share improvements"? FSF is fighting for the latter. Which PDF tool under a free software license offers form filling?
Do you still need to go through commercial services to get text of legal decisions?
Here's another: I have a handgun, and would like to practice without going and dropping $50 at a range. I live in a rural county (where it's perfectly legal to shoot guns on your own property as long as you're outside a town limit), but in a town. I am 90% sure that shooting in the public river bottoms WCA is legal, so I called my county sheriff's office to confirm. I was passed to a "Sergeant (something or other)" and left a message. No reply. Called again a couple of weeks later, no reply. Called a 3rd time, probably months later, no reply. Each time transferred to the same Sergeant. I now believe that's a dead end voicemail for "shit we don't want to deal with".
I know it has to be true in a practical sense, but how can "ignorance of the law" logically not be an excuse when:
- new laws & precedent are written faster than any single human could be expected to read them all
- law officers won't even answer a direct question about "is this legal or no?"
-Styopa
Is someone using an automated script or something to post these? I can't believe someone would be so bored as to manually write this comment in every single article.
The problem, as I understand the summary, is that only people without a computer and Internet access are allowed to use mail for this.
But to the layman, is any javascript, minified or not, any less "proprietary"?
If the source code for a minified JavaScript program is available under a free software license, a layman can in theory learn JavaScript and then make and share improvements to the program. If not, the layman will instead die waiting for the copyright to expire.
What exactly would be the [...] approved alternative?
A minified script with a comment at the top linking to the source code and stating which free software license applies.
When something becomes so common that everyone has relatively barrier-free and low-cost access to it, you've got to give in...
When jumping off a bridge becomes so common that everyone has relatively barrier-free and low-cost access to it, you've got to give in...
FSF would argue that lacking the right to make and share improvements is a "barrier", and thus a minified script with no suitable license isn't "relatively barrier-free".
We might as well take the truly principled stand and object that interacting with the government requires having telephone service
This is part of why the United States subsidizes telephone service for low-income citizens in a program officially called Lifeline and nicknamed Reaganphone.
Working on several government funded projects in my life, I have dealt with this bullshit way too much.
We concluded on one project, it would just be cheaper to send laptops to everyone without modern browsers that to deal with your bullshit.
Get a life, grow up, stop creating hassle that doesn't need to be there.
One should not be required to use electronic anything, ever. Pen and paper, yes, handwritten notes, ought to suffice. For everyone, on their choice, not the government's. (Should I mention that noted late computer scientist E.W. Dijkstra reverted to fountain pen when everyone else went to typewriter? His choice.)
I'm not saying you shouldn't use electronic anything, I'm saying you shouldn't be required to use electronic anything. Beyond that, yes, when governmental agencies offer electronic whatnots, they'd better make sure all the required protocols are 1) open and published, or they publish them themselves, 2) of decent quality, and 3) not bound to any specific software, architecture, whatever. (Note that "html" is published but a rotten standard, so actually a bad example. So is redmond's ooxml abortion.)
The trouble is most "digitalisation" is tech- and hype focused, and tends to forget about function, even the customer. For businesses in a competetive market that's one thing. For governments, with their monopolistic outlook and their tendency to force everyone else to do their bidding exactly their way for no reason, it's another.
"Proprietary JavaScript is a threat to all users on the Web."
This is just sensationalist bullshit of the highest order. Trashdot strikes again.
Minification is just striping out everything that isn't strictly needed to make the code run and shrinking it so it takes less time to transport. The only way this is a threat is if you have a fear of text editors.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Do Donald Robertson is saying we should ban JS minification from government websites?
The problem he says exists has nothing to do with proprietary code, it's the obfuscation that is the problem.
You had me at "no one should have to use proprietary software".
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
The paperwork reduction act usually doesn't cover comments in response to Federal Register requests, but the exemption depends upon not requiring information beyond self-identification- wouldn't information about the submitter's internet capability fall into this category, and require a paperwork reduction act submission?
I find this use of the term "proprietary" to be significantly different from the usual intended meaning of the term.
Usually, "proprietary" means intellectual property belonging to a private organization, with a harsh hand taken to prevent reverse engineering and the stated assertion (either in EULAs or otherwise) that no use can be made in any way of reverse engineered output without being subject to legal action.
Here, "proprietary" apparently means "hard to understand" since everything else does not apply—not a private organization, no need to reverse engineer since it's an interpreted language, etc. By this standard, all of the perl and assembly code in the universe is "proprietary" since it's not written with forty character variable names.
Seems a stretch.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
JavaScript is loaded client-side and can be downloaded and viewed as plain text, so it's certainly not closed source. Minified JavaScript is just JS code that's harder to understand due to function/variable substitution and whitespace stripping and again it's not closed source.
I don't know if you can actually buy commercial JavaScript libraries, but if you did, all the source code would be sent to the public every time a page was loaded with the JS loaded from it, so again it isn't closed source, but technically could be proprietary (i.e. it can only be used on authorised sites and anyone putting it on another unauthorised site is breaking the licence terms).
What's the difference, though, between custom HTML/CSS and custom JS in terms of licencing? All of them could be developed in-house and have the same "proprietary" licencing (i.e. can't be copied and used on other sites) - after all it's illegal to clone someone's site and host it elsewhere without permission surely?
I think the FSF have got this one wrong - if there was a way to make JS closed source, then they might have a point, but claiming JS can be "proprietary" just because it's minified or developed in-house (and not usable on other sites - after all, a lot of money could have been spent developing - or purchasing - the JS) is barking up the wrong tree. As long as the JS works cross-platform on the major browsers, I see no issue myself.
That's unfair. Why single out the proprietary stuff?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The Copyright Office is part of the Library of Congress and as such is part of the legislative branch of the US Government and ultimately reports to Congress. The federal agencies that most people think of and interact with, such as the Patent and Trademark Office or the Veterans Administration, are part of the executive branch which ultimately reports to the President. The PTO specifically is an office within the Department of Commerce. I suspect the inability to use is due to this separation.
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
FTFA:
" We submitted a comment urging them to institute a policy that requires all software they develop and distribute to be free software. "
I disagree with the FSF stance. The "government" SHOULD require all software they develop be copyright-free and PUBLIC DOMAIN...this is very different than "free software" which I assume implies "FSF-compatible licensing" (may include public domain, but also includes GPL and other things, BSD and MIT too I believe)
The "government" should not be developing GPL or BSD or MIT licensed software, or ANYTHING that is "copyrighted" at all -- taxpayer money should result in public domain code, period.
The "government" has no need to ever "copyright" things -- it is not a business, it should not operate as a for-profit business does. It does not need secrecy -- at best "national security" but even in such cases as that, "copyright" is not the right tool for the job. People will argue the proper role of "copyrights" and whether it has devolved and strayed, but "national security" is definitely not a proper role, nor is "so the government can screw the taxpayer and operate like a for-profit business and keep their "inventions" secret (paid with taxpayer money) for a limited time, otherwise the government will have no motive to invent anything"
Any "profit" from a non-tyrannical government MUST be returned to the taxpayers -- they are the only reason for "the government" to even exist in the first place -- to serve them. At best, the government should keep some safety "buffer"
e.g. rainy-day funds, or "future growth" but it is not normal nor acceptable behavior for the government to operate like a "business" and keep profits to itself.
Public domain allows all citizens and taxpayers to benefit from taxpayer and government-developed software: people can copyright it if they so choose, others can make it GPL, others can make it "proprietary" -- this gives freedom for everyone, and there is no "they stole the code!" because the public domain version is available, regardless of what someone does afterwards.
It is not a legitimate role of "government" to copyright their creations, they are not supposed to be a "business" or "profit" in the first place. GPL or "proprietary" or BSD-licensed or anything else, is wrong for the government to push.
Public domain is the only fair system with government-created and taxpayer-funded things -- people can do whatever they want. Anything else creates a monopoly and violates anti-trust laws -- a government-mandated "GPL" monopoly is just as dangerous as a "proprietary" government-enforced monopoly. Public domain does not magically solve anything, but is the only fair choice here.
Wake up! You still think you're free?
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
Who says the minifier used didn't add "all sorts of nasty items, like spyware and other security risks" to the code?
Someone paranoid about that could choose to download and execute the source file instead of the minified file, just as someone paranoid about a particular GNU/Linux distribution's binary packaging could bootstrap everything from source. (And if you name drop Ken Thompson, I'll name drop David A. Wheeler.)
What good does being able to legally share and modify the code that runs a government website?
The point is that you can modify the copy of the code that runs on your computer while retaining compatibility with the server-side back-end, and then you can can share the improvement with other users of the same government web application who can run an extension that substitutes your version for the government's version.
I never distribute the binaries derived from this branch to anyone.
Under the GPL, if you never distribute object code,* you never trigger the obligation to distribute complete corresponding source code to the public. If you do distribute object code of your modified version, a judge will determine whether your added comments make up an essential part of "the preferred form of the work for making modifications".
* One exception involves server-side code under the AGPL, which treats publicly performing a modified version over a network the same way as distributing object code.