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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.
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!
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.
Minifying is like compiling... taking the longer source code variable names and turning them into cryptic symbols.
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.
I find this summary difficult to reply to.
On one hand, everyone is right in that this is not completely closed source.
On the other hand, this doesn't follow any open source rules/guidelines.
For example, the GPL requires source code that is made available to be, "The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it." That would not permit distribution of just the minified / obfuscated version, though they could simply include a comment pointing to the original version.
The use of the word "proprietary" is also pretty loose in this thread. Javascript can be proprietary and yet transmitted in the clear and not obfuscated nor minimized. It is a separate concern altogether. IMO, government sites should be required to provide an open license to all javascript they have on their sites - we, the people of USA at least, have paid for the software through taxes, so we should have a license to it (IMO), and an open source license is the easiest solution to that. This, I believe, is a worthy argument to make. However, this should completely ignore the technical details such as the minification of the code, since there are plenty of open source compatible ways to do that and still offer the full source.
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 (!).
Open in Chrome. Hit F12. Choose Sources. Click the JS file you want to inspect. Click { } for "Pretty Print". Done.
What was the issue again? Oh wait, there isn't one.
Uninstall or disable LibreJs then.
Not everyone wants to compute like they were a member of the "bearded computer priesthood" at the MIT AI lab in 1972.
Stallmans axes...well his philosophies actually take choices AWAY from the users in favor of supposed freedoms they can really only take advantage of IF they are also members of "the bearded priesthood"
And I say that as someone who DOES use Linux.
Even though it is a textual encoding of a program in JavaScript, it still isn't necessarily free software for two reasons:
Uninstall or disable LibreJs then.
Not everyone wants to compute like they were a member of the "bearded computer priesthood" at the MIT AI lab in 1972.
Stallmans axes...well his philosophies actually take choices AWAY from the users in favor of supposed freedoms they can really only take advantage of IF they are also members of "the bearded priesthood"
And I say that as someone who DOES use Linux.
GNU/Linux
Click the JS file you want to inspect. Click { } for "Pretty Print". Done.
Sure, and you can use a hexdump or disassembler to get the "source" to a binary program. That doesn't mean that you can understand what it is doing, or see security holes, or modify it, or fix bugs.
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.
GNU/Linux :^)
Touche, Anonymous Coward, touche.
However shouldn't that be :^)==>
To represent his beard?
Not a dickhead. Sure I think some of his "zealotry" isn't practical for most people or at times productive, but I don't think he's a dickhead. He means well, but he is still to some extent living in computings past...and his "Bearded priesthoodness" is what allows him to do that because he doesn't use computers the way the masses do.
I reject your government, and substitute my own ... "strange women lyin' in ponds distributin' swords"
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Hold on a second... Let's suppose I take some code that's licensed under the GPL (any language) and I'm creating a derivative work. Of course, I must make the source code freely available, but consider the following set of hypotheticals.
(1) During the creation of my derivative work, I embed comments into the source file at various locations.
(2) During the creation of my derivative work, I make a branch for debugging/exploration and embed various comments and perhaps insert debugging traces such as printf("%s %d\n", __LINE__, __FILE__); all over the code. The branch was solely for my own edification, so after I am edified, I discard it and work off the main branch. I never distribute the binaries derived from this branch to anyone.
(3) During the creation of my derivative work, I take notes in a spiral bound notebook describing how the code works. These notes may even refer to the code by filename and line number.
(4) During the creation of my derivative work, I take notes in another application that I save apart from the source code. These notes may even refer to the code by filename and line number.
(5) I do (3), but I also write/use a fancy editor that finds comments by file/line and overlays them next to the source on screen, but doesn't modify the source file.
Under which conditions do I have to release the source with my comments? I'm pretty sure I do for (1) but not (2) or (3). The last two are just meant as an exercise in proving that GPL makes distinctions that don't matter much in principle. After all, if you can refuse to release the "comments" for (5) then it's operationally no different than (1) at all.
Plus these sort of things amuse me. Things that have the same effects should be subject to the same rules. Things that have the same process should be subject to the same rules. But ultimately it doesn't work out ...
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.
Uninstall or disable LibreJs then.
Not everyone wants to compute like they were a member of the "bearded computer priesthood" at the MIT AI lab in 1972.
Stallmans axes...well his philosophies actually take choices AWAY from the users in favor of supposed freedoms they can really only take advantage of IF they are also members of "the bearded priesthood"
And I say that as someone who DOES use Linux.
GNU/Linux
I what if I run a plan9 userland you insensitive clod.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.