Have you seen our tax code lately, or the Internal Revenue Service? Forget proprietary software. Try proprietary documents, forms, and methods of submission!
I was going to say that... I love it when a Government site makes me download a MS Word or Excel file. So I need to either buy a Microsoft product or trust OSS solutions that often mangle the document (through no fault of their own... reverse engineering a proprietary file format is difficult and displaying it the exact same is even harder).
For what it's worth, I have a Mac so those won't work. I don't have the time right now to search microsoft.com for a Mac version so I reserve judgment until then :)
Wtf? Am I missing something here? People have problems with running propriety javascript?
I don't get it. You don't have to install anything and if you're concerned about what could be in the javascript, then use incognito mode, tor, a proxy, etc.
You're going to increase the cost of web software products exponentially if devs can't use propriety javascript.
I think the thing you missed is the existence of people like the Free Software Foundation. There are indeed people who are generally opposed to proprietary software on a philosophical/ethical/moral level.
The older I get, and the more software work I do, the more I come in parity to FSF's platform as a whole.
IoT is a mess right now, purely because of rent-seeking anti-standards, treacherous computing. Do you own your devices? Hardly! Phillips shut down all 3rd party bulbs, and 'graciously' fixed that after a bad 1 day campaign... but retains the ability to do it again.
Google destroyed the Revolv servers for no good reason. It trashed all the devices that relied the purely webAPI implemented hardware.
I can go on... In the end, I just get sick and tired of being pulled in 1000 different directions, with as many 'cloud providers', doing that many different bad implementations of the same thing (but as their serf in their castle).
Open Source is a way out of local computing problems. Open Standards allows me to bring my business elsewhere when I'm alienated. Open Protocols allows me to communicate with other networks and computers. All are essential.
This is largely a philosophical and moral issue as opposed to a practical one. It would be something akin to a conscientious objector drafted for military service or an Amish person required to apply for a horse and buggy operator's license via a government website.
Minifying the Javascript files admittedly reduces the bandwidth of a server, however providing source code for compiled/minified code can still be handled separately, and remove the argument of bandwidth since a small fraction of users care to look at the source itself.
Because then they need to write their own version. For some libraries, this would be a huge amount of work. Could you imagine having to write a replacement for jQuery, or any other handy libraries like moment.js or bootstrap?
None of those libraries are proprietary, so they don't pose any threat. The issue here is no different than with non-browser javascript, or even non-browser anything.
As usual with FSF stuff, I don't actually disagree, but it blows my mind that they actually care this much. I can't imagine being unwilling to submit a request (that furthers the cause of free software) because it requires going through a proprietary portal.
Their actions seem to be consistent with their principles. I'd be far more surprised if they were willing to sacrifice them out of pragmatism. Rather, perhaps the advice they need is "choose your battles".
The anti-proprietary-js movement seems to be coming from RMS himself (given his complaints to con organizers). And he hasn't used a browser other than emacs in... ever?
I wish these guys worked on sounding less crazy. I agree with their point here: software does stuff we don't like and dot-gov has a responsibility to review third-party code. Linking that to an 'all software must be FOSS' argument starts to get nutty.
I make money by selling software. Does that make me a pariah to the FSF? I've never been sure. I still want to donate money to preserve their unique voice, so maybe the answer is that you have to be a little crazy to do their job.
> I make money by selling software. Does that make me a pariah to the FSF? I've never been sure.
FSF encourages people to make money by selling software, but their view is that it is unethical to arrange for a user of software not to enjoy the four freedoms with respect to that software.
If you've arranged for users of your software not to have those four freedoms, FSF finds what you do objectionable and wants you to stop doing it (I don't think "pariah" would be fair).
In other words, you can sell software as long as your license allows the user to make as many copies as they like, and give them away for free if they want. I can understand why so many people consider free software to be anti-capitalist in principle.
Sounds crazy right? I guess that's why we see so few examples of it being done in practice. However Factorio is a recent example that comes close: I rarely play games but Factorio seems nice. I tried the demo but wasn't sure if I thought it worth 20 euros. I then pirated it from a friend to try out further and a few days later decided to buy the game.
I can give people as many copies as I like and yet they sold enough copies to make millions (on a team of 20 people iirc). I also bought the game a second time to gift it to someone.
Do you just mean that Factorio has no DRM, or do the developers explicitly allow you to share it with friends after you purchase it?
When the free software movement started, software DRM was an almost entirely unknown issue, and so the focus was on the legal permission to share copies with friends (not the absence of technical means that deter this).
No DRM, which of course is a long way from free software, but what I meant to compare is the business model, which is close: you can give it to anyone for free with no chance of being caught.
If you are legally required to buy a license then most (sane) businesses will pay for the software if they want to use it, whether it has DRM or not, to avoid legal liability.
So DRM free success is not evidence of any kind that freeing the software from legal copying restrictions would be successful at all.
Is it not anti-capitalist in principle? It's all about sharing what you have and not keeping things from others. Quite the opposite of DRM and intellectual property.
I suppose it is, yes. Capitalism is the private ownership of the means of production, and given that people can make things, outlawing the ownership of people is anti-capitalist.
Capitalism means free enterprise. People are agents who can sell their services or property or not as they see fit. Unless someone agreed to sell themselves into slavery, slavery is not capitalist.
Capitalism doesn't mean money rules, although abuse of a capitalist system often involves money being used to corrupt capitalism. Paying politicians, judges, controlling the media, and other forms of corruption or fraud are often labeled "Capitalist" by anti-capitalists, but those things are not capitalist but abuses.
An example of a genuine critique of capitalism (or the limits of it), is to point out that each of us has benefited from our governments social investment in us, such as education, and we should therefore all contribute to educating the next generation. This is not a capitalist arrangement in the sense that individuals are being both given education and required to pay for the next generation without express agreement with each individual.
But recognizing the usefulness of some non-capitalist arrangements is not the same as being anti-capitalist. Most people who say they want capitalism to overrule all other concerns are actually people who want their money to overrule other concerns and are deceptively using the name "capitalism" to hide their parasitic agenda.
I think you need to check your premise. People are not a means of production. The means of production are the things that support a producer's ability to produce. Owning a human being means owning the fruits of that person's productive labor, which would imply a non-private ownership of the means of that person's productive achievement.
It absolutely did ~NOT~ outlaw slavery. What it says is the following:
"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."
A free man cannot become a slave. But if you were tried and found guilty of a crime, then the 13th amendment no longer protects you. And all people of "X Attribute" are criminals; they just didn't know it yet.
I don't understand what they are objecting to here. What is "Proprietary JavaScript"? JavaScript is a part of the web, arguably the least proprietary technology platform in existence.
> What is "Proprietary JavaScript"? JavaScript is a part of the web, arguably the least proprietary technology platform in existence.
They're not arguing the language is proprietary, they're taking issue that the code embedded in websites is often under a proprietary license. See https://fsf.org/campaigns/freejs
> 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.
Minification is the big baddie here, as it can hide all sorts of stuff. We all joke about spaghetti code and badly named variables. What happens with minification is that variables are a, b, c, d, e, .... and functions are truncated the same way.
It'd be the equivalent of using an open-source system (like busybox), making modifications to it, and then including it on hardware. Then to comply with the license, you provide a hodgepodge of source files in non-standard ways, that might make the environment they provided.
One practical key difference though is that the compute environment for the JavaScript is already built under an assumption that none of the software it's running can be trusted.
So practically speaking, malicious JavaScript could, perhaps, exploit weaknesses in your sandbox but it can't save files the browser doesn't allow, read state the browser doesn't allow, make network connections the browser or the hosting machine's network configuration don't allow, etc., etc., etc.
The irony being that every damned time the boy cried wolf in the past, there was indeed a damned wolf stalking nearby, but the idiot villangers refused to acknolwledge that, and then they wonder where their damned sheep might be.
Maybe we should rename the story as The girl that cried wolf instead... a girl that goes by the name of Cassandra.
From the free software perspective, it's like the government is saying "in order to submit a comment to us, please download this obfuscated Turing complete software and run it on your computer."
That this particular source code is JavaScript on a web page means that it obeys under some more or less correctly implemented sandbox, but you're still obliged to execute minified and unlicensed code.
The FSF views that as unethical. You shouldn't need to load proprietary software onto your computer to communicate with the government.
It's a principled stance that applies even where the current situation is not abusive, so it can seem like exaggeration or even "craziness."
Their comment itself clearly explains their stance.
I assume they're okay with the software on the copyright office's servers being proprietary and closed-source, as well as the software in the word processors and email servers and clients they'll use to banter the topic back and forth internally, right?
It's just the fact that they can't HTTP POST their message to a server using open protocols that sticks in their craw?
I'm curious where they draw the line at coming to terms with the mechanical necessities of interacting with the government to represent their constituency's interests.
I'm not deeply familiar with the exact philosophy of the FSF, but I would guess:
(1) software freedom is mostly about protecting the rights of you as a user of software, and if the government uses proprietary software on their own end to make decisions based on secret rules or whatever then that's basically their business; but on the other hand
(2) there are strong arguments for making the decision making technology of government into free software since government is
for and by the people who should have the right to understand the technology that governs them.
So, in a way they do just want to be able to keep their own computers free from proprietary/secret binary blobs; on the other hand, advocating for government transparency goes hand in hand with advocating for software freedom (thus FSF and EFF are allies).
> I assume they're okay with the software on the copyright office's servers being proprietary and closed-source, as well as the software in the word processors and email servers and clients they'll use to banter the topic back and forth internally, right?
Why do you assume that? I don't think the FSF is okay with closed-source software existing at all
Somehow I thought this was from the EFF and my immediate reaction was that they were going crazy. Then I realized it was the FSF instead and it all made sense. Closed tab.
The LibreJS browser add-on blocks javascript that is above a certain size/complexity and doesn't have a programatically declared (or manually whitelisted) FOSS license.
The FSF uses LibreJS on the computers in their office. Which makes it excruciating to buy airline tickets, for example.
I was flabbergasted when I found this out. I thought something along the lines of "I've been giving these mad martyrs money!?". :)
...It took a while to sink in, but... They are right.
The reasoning goes like this:
A script embedded in a website is a tiny program that runs on your computer. It is software.
Some software is morally wrong. Some software is morally neutral or good. Software can/has/will change the world, and it's important that it be a force of good, not evil.
You can tell the difference between good and bad software by applying the following metrics. The software is "free" (as in William Wallace) if it provides the user with the following freedoms:
* The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any
purpose (freedom 0).
* The freedom to study how the program works, and change
it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1).
Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
* The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your
neighbor (freedom 2).
* The freedom to distribute copies of your modified
versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can
give the whole community a chance to benefit from your
changes. Access to the source code is a precondition
for this.
The javascript on government websites (even non-USA) should have those freedoms. Why not?
Another comment here said that the FSF needs to "pick its battles". Actually, don't you think this is a great one to pick? There's no good excuse for a government web-dev to avoid meeting those requirements. And there's no good argument against users demanding them. It's just javascript!
> The javascript on government websites (even non-USA) should have those freedoms. Why not?
Among other reasons: because they impose restrictions on the subcontractors the government can employ to do the job that increase the overall cost, therefore perhaps failing to do their fiduciary duty to the taxpayer.
It's still an open question which side this issue should fall on for most people who don't see Four Freedoms as a necessary tenet.
How about making it possible to communicate with government offices without JavaScript/ECMAScript at /all/?
What if it worked properly for those with ADA abilities, like say the blind on a text mode TTY with a text-only browser? Those still support basic web forms and the server side is where all data-validation should occur anyway.
Alternatively, as the EFF notes, allowing alternate communications protocols (such as the freely open standard of shudder email) is also a viable secondary channel.
I think the general idea is that software will certainly be in the history books, but it is so flexible that we don't know yet if it will be described as plague or panacea.
I recommend reading or re-reading https://www.gnu.org/gnu/manifesto.html (...remember the part about asteroid mining? It's near this part: "In the long run, making programs free is a step toward the postscarcity world [...]")
It's interesting that when it comes to FOIA, the government will deliver documents in the most inconvenient way possible, but when soliciting input from the public, they only accept documents in whatever way is convenient for them.
And yet almost everyone is willing to vote using e-voting machines and either drive to that voting location with a car that has an onboard computer or take some form of mass-transit with a location GPS and money transaction system...
Pragmatic acceptance of the world as it is does not imply that you agree with it being that way. A lot of people sat at the back of the bus before Rosa Parks.
I have a very strong aversion to evoting systems and will campaign against their introduction.
Does the following solution solve the FSF's problems with "proprietary javascript" (which just seems to mean that it has been minified)? Allow the browser to request un-minified javascript, at the cost of a larger payload.
I wonder if the FSF should start their own religion. It would be easier to argue that the government should allow receiving comments by letter if not allowing them goes against their moral code. I don't think it would be stretching the definition of a religion, either.
A more egregious example is FinCen Form 114. This is a form that you must file with the Department of Treasury every year if you have a bank account abroad. This form is implemented as a JavaScripty PDF thingy that only works on Acrobat Reader on Windows (and maybe Mac) but not on Linux. The penalties for not filing this form are max($100K, 50% of your account balance), so you don't have much of a choice.
What about java software running in the browser with unsecure certificates and full access to the system harddrive? because that's what we have in Portugal to fill taxes.
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[ 0.23 ms ] story [ 129 ms ] threadhttps://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=4 https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=10
For what it's worth, I have a Mac so those won't work. I don't have the time right now to search microsoft.com for a Mac version so I reserve judgment until then :)
https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/v...
I don't get it. You don't have to install anything and if you're concerned about what could be in the javascript, then use incognito mode, tor, a proxy, etc.
You're going to increase the cost of web software products exponentially if devs can't use propriety javascript.
IoT is a mess right now, purely because of rent-seeking anti-standards, treacherous computing. Do you own your devices? Hardly! Phillips shut down all 3rd party bulbs, and 'graciously' fixed that after a bad 1 day campaign... but retains the ability to do it again.
Google destroyed the Revolv servers for no good reason. It trashed all the devices that relied the purely webAPI implemented hardware.
I can go on... In the end, I just get sick and tired of being pulled in 1000 different directions, with as many 'cloud providers', doing that many different bad implementations of the same thing (but as their serf in their castle).
Open Source is a way out of local computing problems. Open Standards allows me to bring my business elsewhere when I'm alienated. Open Protocols allows me to communicate with other networks and computers. All are essential.
Why?
Minifying the Javascript files admittedly reduces the bandwidth of a server, however providing source code for compiled/minified code can still be handled separately, and remove the argument of bandwidth since a small fraction of users care to look at the source itself.
Minification is easy to get around - copy & paste into IDE and autoformat. Anyone who cares enough about the source code knows that they can do this.
I make money by selling software. Does that make me a pariah to the FSF? I've never been sure. I still want to donate money to preserve their unique voice, so maybe the answer is that you have to be a little crazy to do their job.
FSF encourages people to make money by selling software, but their view is that it is unethical to arrange for a user of software not to enjoy the four freedoms with respect to that software.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Free_Software_Definition#T...
If you've arranged for users of your software not to have those four freedoms, FSF finds what you do objectionable and wants you to stop doing it (I don't think "pariah" would be fair).
I can give people as many copies as I like and yet they sold enough copies to make millions (on a team of 20 people iirc). I also bought the game a second time to gift it to someone.
When the free software movement started, software DRM was an almost entirely unknown issue, and so the focus was on the legal permission to share copies with friends (not the absence of technical means that deter this).
So DRM free success is not evidence of any kind that freeing the software from legal copying restrictions would be successful at all.
Capitalism doesn't mean money rules, although abuse of a capitalist system often involves money being used to corrupt capitalism. Paying politicians, judges, controlling the media, and other forms of corruption or fraud are often labeled "Capitalist" by anti-capitalists, but those things are not capitalist but abuses.
An example of a genuine critique of capitalism (or the limits of it), is to point out that each of us has benefited from our governments social investment in us, such as education, and we should therefore all contribute to educating the next generation. This is not a capitalist arrangement in the sense that individuals are being both given education and required to pay for the next generation without express agreement with each individual.
But recognizing the usefulness of some non-capitalist arrangements is not the same as being anti-capitalist. Most people who say they want capitalism to overrule all other concerns are actually people who want their money to overrule other concerns and are deceptively using the name "capitalism" to hide their parasitic agenda.
"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."
A free man cannot become a slave. But if you were tried and found guilty of a crime, then the 13th amendment no longer protects you. And all people of "X Attribute" are criminals; they just didn't know it yet.
They're not arguing the language is proprietary, they're taking issue that the code embedded in websites is often under a proprietary license. See https://fsf.org/campaigns/freejs
> 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.
Minification is the big baddie here, as it can hide all sorts of stuff. We all joke about spaghetti code and badly named variables. What happens with minification is that variables are a, b, c, d, e, .... and functions are truncated the same way.
It'd be the equivalent of using an open-source system (like busybox), making modifications to it, and then including it on hardware. Then to comply with the license, you provide a hodgepodge of source files in non-standard ways, that might make the environment they provided.
So practically speaking, malicious JavaScript could, perhaps, exploit weaknesses in your sandbox but it can't save files the browser doesn't allow, read state the browser doesn't allow, make network connections the browser or the hosting machine's network configuration don't allow, etc., etc., etc.
It's... An odd hill to choose to die on.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.en.html
Maybe we should rename the story as The girl that cried wolf instead... a girl that goes by the name of Cassandra.
That this particular source code is JavaScript on a web page means that it obeys under some more or less correctly implemented sandbox, but you're still obliged to execute minified and unlicensed code.
The FSF views that as unethical. You shouldn't need to load proprietary software onto your computer to communicate with the government.
It's a principled stance that applies even where the current situation is not abusive, so it can seem like exaggeration or even "craziness."
Their comment itself clearly explains their stance.
https://www.fsf.org/licensing/2016-tech-comment-copyright-of...
It's just the fact that they can't HTTP POST their message to a server using open protocols that sticks in their craw?
I'm curious where they draw the line at coming to terms with the mechanical necessities of interacting with the government to represent their constituency's interests.
(1) software freedom is mostly about protecting the rights of you as a user of software, and if the government uses proprietary software on their own end to make decisions based on secret rules or whatever then that's basically their business; but on the other hand
(2) there are strong arguments for making the decision making technology of government into free software since government is for and by the people who should have the right to understand the technology that governs them.
So, in a way they do just want to be able to keep their own computers free from proprietary/secret binary blobs; on the other hand, advocating for government transparency goes hand in hand with advocating for software freedom (thus FSF and EFF are allies).
Why do you assume that? I don't think the FSF is okay with closed-source software existing at all
The FSF uses LibreJS on the computers in their office. Which makes it excruciating to buy airline tickets, for example.
I was flabbergasted when I found this out. I thought something along the lines of "I've been giving these mad martyrs money!?". :)
...It took a while to sink in, but... They are right.
The reasoning goes like this:
A script embedded in a website is a tiny program that runs on your computer. It is software.
Some software is morally wrong. Some software is morally neutral or good. Software can/has/will change the world, and it's important that it be a force of good, not evil.
You can tell the difference between good and bad software by applying the following metrics. The software is "free" (as in William Wallace) if it provides the user with the following freedoms:
The javascript on government websites (even non-USA) should have those freedoms. Why not?Another comment here said that the FSF needs to "pick its battles". Actually, don't you think this is a great one to pick? There's no good excuse for a government web-dev to avoid meeting those requirements. And there's no good argument against users demanding them. It's just javascript!
[Edit: wrap "excruciating" in * instead of ".]
Arguably, there is a perfectly valid excuse - the four freedoms aren't actually laws, so governments have no reason (or right) to enforce them.
Among other reasons: because they impose restrictions on the subcontractors the government can employ to do the job that increase the overall cost, therefore perhaps failing to do their fiduciary duty to the taxpayer.
It's still an open question which side this issue should fall on for most people who don't see Four Freedoms as a necessary tenet.
What if it worked properly for those with ADA abilities, like say the blind on a text mode TTY with a text-only browser? Those still support basic web forms and the server side is where all data-validation should occur anyway.
Alternatively, as the EFF notes, allowing alternate communications protocols (such as the freely open standard of shudder email) is also a viable secondary channel.
I think you mean FSF here.
I recommend reading or re-reading https://www.gnu.org/gnu/manifesto.html (...remember the part about asteroid mining? It's near this part: "In the long run, making programs free is a step toward the postscarcity world [...]")
And there are in fact a lot of documents on this topic available here: https://www.gnu.org/server/sitemap.html#directory-philosophy
I have a very strong aversion to evoting systems and will campaign against their introduction.
I'm not sure whether that's ironic or expected.
That said, there should be nothing "fancy" on government web sites, and they should be compatible,with all operating systems and common web browsers.
I had to double check if this was a buzzfeed clickbait or real FSF article. Travesty!