By "free", do you mean merely "without charge", or do you mean "giving users the right and ability to make and share improvements"?
It is obvious in context that he meant "free as in beer", not "libre". Are you really that obtuse or is it deliberate?
I assumed it would be obvious in context that this was a rhetorical question.
Evince version 3.18.2 and Okular: 0.24.2 [...] I was able to fill the forms
That's a start; thank you for the tip. But I have read some complaints that some of these cases require the user not only to fill in the form but also submit the form through the PDF reader. I wonder whether there's a way to test submission.
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.
My bad. By "executable", I meant what the GPL calls "object code", which is a computer program in any form other than "the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it". My comment should have used the term "object code" instead of "executable", and I should have checked what term the GPL actually uses instead of relying on my imperfect memory.
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.
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?
Even though it is a textual encoding of a program in JavaScript, it still isn't necessarily free software for two reasons:
It contains no comment at the top giving a URL where the program's "preferred form for making modifications" can be found. This would be an un-minified version with full variable names and comments.
It contains no notice of the user's right to make and share improvements to the program.
The downside is that a SSL or TSS certificate is often not free
Certificate cost is no longer the obstacle it used to be, as a TLS certificate is free unless you need organizational validation. StartSSL and WoSign have been providing domain-validated (DV) certificates without charge to individuals for years, and automated ACME CA Let's Encrypt has been in operation for several months.
Third-party resource does not support HTTPS
Mixed content policies tend to block use of HTTP resources in HTTPS documents. For example, until September 2013, no major ad network supported HTTPS, and websites redirected non-subscriber visits from HTTPS to HTTP to ensure ad display. September 2013 is when AdSense added HTTPS.
Shared web host without HTTPS
In the early 2010s, many shared web hosts charged extra for HTTPS support. Having already paid for several more months of hosting is a disincentive to switching.
Troublesome certificate renewal
Let's Encrypt, a recently popular CA that issues domain-validated certificates automatically using the ACME protocol, currently makes them valid for 90 days. But some shared web hosts do not offer anything like cPanel for automatic installation of a renewed certificate. Instead, they require manually filing a support ticket every time the certificate is renewed. WebFaction is like this, and someone has staged a passive-aggressive protest by making an an ACME client that requests a certificate and then automatically files a support ticket.
Users of SNI-ignorant browsers
The site shares an IPv4 address with another site, and the site receives significant traffic from web browsers that do not support Server Name Indication, which allows name-based virtual hosting of HTTPS sites. The most popular such browser was Internet Explorer on Windows XP. But since April 2014, this browser has reached its end of support. Not only has its usage share plummeted, but because it is no longer receiving security updates, we can assume it to be no longer secure against man-in-the-browser attacks.
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.
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.
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.
It's a client-side application written in JavaScript using your web browser's scripting engine. But though the scripting engine in IceCat/Firefox and Chromium is free, the client-side application running inside that engine is proprietary, and the LibreJS extension blocks it from running because it is proprietary.
Do you have to prepare and file, or pay someone thousands of dollars per year to prepare and file, a separate income tax return for each tax jurisdiction in which someone orders for you? The income came from people living in those districts of those cities in those counties in those states; you would then deduct expenses related to sales to those districts of those cities in those counties in those states.
The problem is not the existence of "some soft of device that could keep track of lots of numbers.... maybe even THOUSANDS of numbers, and COMPUTE quickly". It's the 403 Forbidden error that a low-volume business gets when it attempts to query said "device".
When you don't make a distinction between taxes and user fees, it's easy to reach that conclusion.
Where is the bright line between a user fee for an essential service, combined with a fine or imprisonment for not purchasing that service, and a tax? Consider a hypothetical "user fee" for not shooting you for traveling on city-owned roads or sidewalks.
most companies with sales tax calc requirements just use these services either via API or local software that is kept updated
Vertex quoted me a minimum fee of $350 per month, even for a tiny spare-time business that makes only a few sales per year. So much for being able to go into business for the price of web hosting.
Payroll tax is paid where a business has employees. It does not apply in jurisdictions where it has no employees. A mail order business is likely to have customers in far more local tax jurisdictions than it has employees. Therefore it is more likely to be able to afford to hire tax professionals for each jurisdiction with employees than for each jurisdiction with customers.
Local sales taxes are complicated.
State sales tax is paid where a business has storefronts or warehouses. Under current law, it does not apply in jurisdictions where it has no storefronts or warehouses. A mail order business is likely to have customers in far more local tax jurisdictions than it has storefronts or warehouses. Therefore it is more likely to be able to afford to hire tax professionals for each jurisdiction with storefronts or warehouses than for each jurisdiction with customers.
That means that as a business, you simply pay a service a small fee for taking care of all of this for you. Intuit does it for payroll stuff now
Such a fee would likely be higher for mail order sales tax than for payroll tax solely because of the sheer number of jurisdictions that it must cover.
what's changed since '92 that software is more able to do this now than before?
What has changed is that cheap web hosting and payment processing has lowered the expectation of entry barrier in setting up a small mail-order business. The smallest viable mail-order business in 1992 might have been able to afford expensive sales tax software and periodic updates to reflect changes to thousands of local tax codes. The smallest viable mail-order business in 2016 is likely smaller than the smallest viable mail-order business in 1992.
After the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show controversy, live sports on traditional TV are on a delay anyway to block "fuck" or a visible female nipple.
Though apartheid became unenforceable in the United States in 1965, their effects continue because of other laws, such as property law and inheritance law.
It's 2016 get the fuck over it.
Said other laws make it difficult for families to "get [...] over it." Even if all genetic causes of prejudice were eliminated, socioeconomic status is still heritable despite not being genetic.
The Apple IIGS contains a WDC 65C816 CPU clocked at 2.8 MHz, but only 2.6 MHz is usable because of DRAM refresh. Third-party accelerator cards were available, but some accelerators had bugs that could cause an inserted floppy disk to become unreadable.
Cite the laws which discriminate against minorities.
One set of laws was an apartheid regime called Jim Crow, which was in place in several U.S. states in the early to mid twentieth century. Though apartheid became unenforceable in the United States in 1965, their effects continue because of other laws, such as property law and inheritance law. Parents who had been impoverished by apartheid had less wealth to hand down to their children. Having to work harder to make ends meet caused families to sacrifice education in favor of survival.
Drug prohibition is another one. Michelle Alexander argued in The New Jim Crow that African Americans are disproportionately arrested for possessing recreational psychoactive substances compared to their proportion of users of such substances.
Slashdot Mirror
By "free", do you mean merely "without charge", or do you mean "giving users the right and ability to make and share improvements"?
It is obvious in context that he meant "free as in beer", not "libre". Are you really that obtuse or is it deliberate?
I assumed it would be obvious in context that this was a rhetorical question.
Evince version 3.18.2 and Okular: 0.24.2 [...] I was able to fill the forms
That's a start; thank you for the tip. But I have read some complaints that some of these cases require the user not only to fill in the form but also submit the form through the PDF reader. I wonder whether there's a way to test submission.
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.
My bad. By "executable", I meant what the GPL calls "object code", which is a computer program in any form other than "the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it". My comment should have used the term "object code" instead of "executable", and I should have checked what term the GPL actually uses instead of relying on my imperfect memory.
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.
The problem, as I understand the summary, is that only people without a computer and Internet access are allowed to use mail for this.
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?
Even though it is a textual encoding of a program in JavaScript, it still isn't necessarily free software for two reasons:
The downside is that a SSL or TSS certificate is often not free
Certificate cost is no longer the obstacle it used to be, as a TLS certificate is free unless you need organizational validation. StartSSL and WoSign have been providing domain-validated (DV) certificates without charge to individuals for years, and automated ACME CA Let's Encrypt has been in operation for several months.
Why not use HTTPS everywhere?
There are about three reasons:
Third-party resource does not support HTTPS Mixed content policies tend to block use of HTTP resources in HTTPS documents. For example, until September 2013, no major ad network supported HTTPS, and websites redirected non-subscriber visits from HTTPS to HTTP to ensure ad display. September 2013 is when AdSense added HTTPS. Shared web host without HTTPS In the early 2010s, many shared web hosts charged extra for HTTPS support. Having already paid for several more months of hosting is a disincentive to switching. Troublesome certificate renewal Let's Encrypt, a recently popular CA that issues domain-validated certificates automatically using the ACME protocol, currently makes them valid for 90 days. But some shared web hosts do not offer anything like cPanel for automatic installation of a renewed certificate. Instead, they require manually filing a support ticket every time the certificate is renewed. WebFaction is like this, and someone has staged a passive-aggressive protest by making an an ACME client that requests a certificate and then automatically files a support ticket. Users of SNI-ignorant browsers The site shares an IPv4 address with another site, and the site receives significant traffic from web browsers that do not support Server Name Indication, which allows name-based virtual hosting of HTTPS sites. The most popular such browser was Internet Explorer on Windows XP. But since April 2014, this browser has reached its end of support. Not only has its usage share plummeted, but because it is no longer receiving security updates, we can assume it to be no longer secure against man-in-the-browser attacks.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.
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.
Even if it weren't minified, is the script licensed in a way that permits you to make and share your improvements?
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.
It's a client-side application written in JavaScript using your web browser's scripting engine. But though the scripting engine in IceCat/Firefox and Chromium is free, the client-side application running inside that engine is proprietary, and the LibreJS extension blocks it from running because it is proprietary.
Do you have to prepare and file, or pay someone thousands of dollars per year to prepare and file, a separate income tax return for each tax jurisdiction in which someone orders for you? The income came from people living in those districts of those cities in those counties in those states; you would then deduct expenses related to sales to those districts of those cities in those counties in those states.
The problem is not the existence of "some soft of device that could keep track of lots of numbers.... maybe even THOUSANDS of numbers, and COMPUTE quickly". It's the 403 Forbidden error that a low-volume business gets when it attempts to query said "device".
When you don't make a distinction between taxes and user fees, it's easy to reach that conclusion.
Where is the bright line between a user fee for an essential service, combined with a fine or imprisonment for not purchasing that service, and a tax? Consider a hypothetical "user fee" for not shooting you for traveling on city-owned roads or sidewalks.
most companies with sales tax calc requirements just use these services either via API or local software that is kept updated
Vertex quoted me a minimum fee of $350 per month, even for a tiny spare-time business that makes only a few sales per year. So much for being able to go into business for the price of web hosting.
Payroll taxes are complicated.
Payroll tax is paid where a business has employees. It does not apply in jurisdictions where it has no employees. A mail order business is likely to have customers in far more local tax jurisdictions than it has employees. Therefore it is more likely to be able to afford to hire tax professionals for each jurisdiction with employees than for each jurisdiction with customers.
Local sales taxes are complicated.
State sales tax is paid where a business has storefronts or warehouses. Under current law, it does not apply in jurisdictions where it has no storefronts or warehouses. A mail order business is likely to have customers in far more local tax jurisdictions than it has storefronts or warehouses. Therefore it is more likely to be able to afford to hire tax professionals for each jurisdiction with storefronts or warehouses than for each jurisdiction with customers.
That means that as a business, you simply pay a service a small fee for taking care of all of this for you. Intuit does it for payroll stuff now
Such a fee would likely be higher for mail order sales tax than for payroll tax solely because of the sheer number of jurisdictions that it must cover.
what's changed since '92 that software is more able to do this now than before?
What has changed is that cheap web hosting and payment processing has lowered the expectation of entry barrier in setting up a small mail-order business. The smallest viable mail-order business in 1992 might have been able to afford expensive sales tax software and periodic updates to reflect changes to thousands of local tax codes. The smallest viable mail-order business in 2016 is likely smaller than the smallest viable mail-order business in 1992.
After the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show controversy, live sports on traditional TV are on a delay anyway to block "fuck" or a visible female nipple.
Though apartheid became unenforceable in the United States in 1965, their effects continue because of other laws, such as property law and inheritance law.
It's 2016 get the fuck over it.
Said other laws make it difficult for families to "get [...] over it." Even if all genetic causes of prejudice were eliminated, socioeconomic status is still heritable despite not being genetic.
How many megahertzen to an apple //gs?
The Apple IIGS contains a WDC 65C816 CPU clocked at 2.8 MHz, but only 2.6 MHz is usable because of DRAM refresh. Third-party accelerator cards were available, but some accelerators had bugs that could cause an inserted floppy disk to become unreadable.
If you want to treat people equally then stop separating people based on ethnicity.
Tell that to white police officers who disproportionately arrest people of color for nonviolent offenses.
Cite the laws which discriminate against minorities.
One set of laws was an apartheid regime called Jim Crow, which was in place in several U.S. states in the early to mid twentieth century. Though apartheid became unenforceable in the United States in 1965, their effects continue because of other laws, such as property law and inheritance law. Parents who had been impoverished by apartheid had less wealth to hand down to their children. Having to work harder to make ends meet caused families to sacrifice education in favor of survival.
Drug prohibition is another one. Michelle Alexander argued in The New Jim Crow that African Americans are disproportionately arrested for possessing recreational psychoactive substances compared to their proportion of users of such substances.