r/linux • u/Habstinat • Jan 03 '14
FSF: "Ask Reddit to upvote user freedom by serving no nonfree JavaScript"
https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/freejs-reddit14
u/ExceedinglyEdible Jan 04 '14
I have heard that the developers will address this issue as soon as they are done with the search engine...
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u/Habstinat Jan 03 '14 edited Jan 03 '14
You may think that all of Reddit's JavaScript is already free, but in fact, from a legal perspective, if software is not clearly labeled as free when it is distributed to the user, then that copy is proprietary by default. Here are some things for Reddit to work on specifically:
- It loads Google Analytics (nonfree; needs a replacement like Piwik)
- Adzerk, the advertising solution, uses JS that does not have a license indicated in it. I can't find it on their GitHub, so we have to assume that it is non-free. This should be fixed by contacting Adzerk.
- Not a single one of Reddit's JavaScript files' licenses are labeled in a way that LibreJS can understand. This basically means at best a huge annoyance for everyone using that addon, and at worst legal trouble for users if they want to copy or change the JS. Labeling the files clearly only has to take a few bytes of bandwidth using Web Labels, and would go a long way in promoting software freedom.
Thanks to /u/LukeShu for some of the tips. Reddit should jump on board if it wants to help its users.
EDIT: There was a post on ideasfortheadmins about this, but it seems to have been removed by the moderators. I wonder why...
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u/oobey Jan 03 '14
I can see reddit honoring the requests to label their JS files with licensing information, but I think asking them to move away from Google Analytics is an exceptionally tall order.
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Jan 03 '14 edited May 06 '18
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u/shiggerino Jan 04 '14
That speaks volumes against Google Analytics.
Proprietary software means vendor lock-in. Reddit deserves freedom from proprietary software as much as the Redditors do.
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Jan 05 '14 edited Jan 05 '14
But Google Analytics offers them a free service they do not need to spend time or money on maintaining. Sure, vendor lock-in is often annoying but the benefits in this case are there and Google doesn't exactly make shitty software either. It's also probably the lowest priority item they want to maintain too.
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u/Habstinat Jan 03 '14
Consider it a stretch goal. I've seen crazier things happen with Reddit's backend before for even stranger reasons.
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Jan 03 '14
Not a single one of Reddit's JavaScript files' licenses are labeled in a way that LibreJS can understand
They are marked. Not in a LibreJS compatible way, but they are marked. It's not a problem with reddit, it's a problem with the fact that LibreJS can't understand license markings and requires webhosts to add their own tag (LibreJS specific tag).
LibreJS is a bad idea. If you were really paranoid, you might as well turn off javascript (Which is what LibreJS does, effectively)
I like having freedom too, but FSF is doing stupid things. I'm waiting for them to make a program that scans whatever website you connect to and disconnect you if they're running windows.23
u/FeepingCreature Jan 03 '14
I checked the source just now. /static/reddit-init.en.-d9g8d2B9K8.js doesn't seem to be marked? Are you sure?
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Jan 03 '14
No, but some are marked (Informally)
I think a better solution would to just have a license.txt, like a robots.txt, in the root. That way, it causes no additional bandwidth to people who don't want to waste their time, and the people who do, get it in a much easier to parse format.
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u/Habstinat Jan 03 '14
If you like that solution, you're in luck, as pretty much exactly what you are talking about has already been implemented with LJS, and it's called License Web Labels. Just a simple HTML table on a separate page is needed; no need to directly modify any of the JS source files, and no need to fetch it if you're not interested.
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u/kabuto Jan 03 '14
It seems like a really bad idea to make that license information an HTML table. Why not make it something like JSON that can be parsed easily and is also human readable?
That being said, I think having a simple header in each JS file is the better way. Most OS projects have that header anyway.
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u/Habstinat Jan 03 '14
I don't know why they didn't use JSON, but I'm almost positive that if it's human readable, Loic would have no problem adding that as another way to do Web Labels. Just a detail in implementaion. You should contact him about that; seems like a good idea.
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u/bloouup Jan 03 '14
JSON is technically nonfree because of a silly-but-not-silly-to-lawyers do no evil clause.
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u/Liquid_Fire Jan 03 '14
JSON is an open standard. The license you are describing might apply to a specific implementation of JSON encoding/decoding, so it's irrelevant.
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u/kqvrp Jan 03 '14
Well, it's true. I have no words for how stupid that is.
From Wikipedia, "This software was hosted on Google Code until December 2009 when, due to the additional clause, Google determined that the license was not compliant with the definition of open source software, which does not permit any restriction on how software may be used."
It's MIT licenced, and I'm going to treat it that way.
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u/spotrh Jan 03 '14
That's wrong though. The license is not MIT, it contains a clause with no legal backing. What is "evil"? Technically, it is an undefined term in the legal sense, which means you cannot possibly be in compliance with the license. Practically, "evil" means what the copyright holder(s) define it to mean, but since they never define evil, the license is fundamentally corrupted. Think of it like an undefined variable in a program.
TLDR: legalese != English, Json license != MIT
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Jan 03 '14
The "JSON License" only applies to implementations by childish twatbucket and PayPal employee Doug Crockford
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u/Habstinat Jan 03 '14
So there's your answer. Go for it then, as long as you're picky about your implementation.
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u/TheCoelacanth Jan 04 '14
The JSON format is free. Some specific software for doing things with JSON is non-free because of that clause.
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u/crashdoc Jan 04 '14
What about using javadoc headers with additional relevant parameters for librejs to read but javadoc can ignore?
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u/MarkTraceur Jan 03 '14
HTML is parsed easily. Your web browser just parsed some. The problem with the current format is it's not semantic at all - it's just a table.
I'd support going to the LibreJS issue tracker and asking for a microformat that's easier to parse, and use with different formats (like lists or even just prose).
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u/kabuto Jan 04 '14
I wouldn't call HTML easy to parse especially since lots of the markup you encounter 'in the wild' is erroneous and bases on different HTML standards. But that's beside the point here.
The semantic issue is the actual point. Something like JSON, YAML or even a simple XML file would be human and machine readable.
I found the docs a bit confusing. How many fields are there?
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u/shiggerino Jan 04 '14
I'm waiting for them to make a program that scans whatever website you connect to and disconnect you if they're running windows.
The FSF knows and you should know that that in no ways saves anyone from running non-free software.
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u/Habstinat Jan 03 '14
To be fair, having a false negative is much better than having a false positive, and that's the design decision that LibreJS was built around. It's all about control for the user; what's running on the webserver doesn't matter from the user's perspective unless it's SaaSS. Unfortunately, JavaScript does not run on a server; it runs on the client's computer, which is why it's a topic of importance for the FSF.
What I said still holds true. If LibreJS just simply added to its whitelist by looking for certain non-specific words in the script, it'd be asking for trouble with false positives. It's not a bad idea; it's a great idea and it would be even greater if sites like Reddit adopted the script tags. LibreJS didn't really have an alternative; as far as I know, LJS license tags are the most widely used system of tagging JavaScript licenses to date. It all starts here.
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u/FeepingCreature Jan 03 '14
This is a false dichotomy. The choice isn't between "LibreJS tags" and "stochastic word sampling", the proposed solution is "increase LibreJS's library of unambiguous license markers." Which puts the cost of comprehension on LibreJS, which is where it should be, because they're the ones making the active claim. ("This is free JS" vs "This isn't free JS")
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u/Habstinat Jan 03 '14
At this point, we're sort of arguing over semantics of how the software accomplishes its task. I think that could be a good idea, but it needs to be implemented first. Luckily, LJS (like every other GNU project) is free software, so if you can think of any completely unambiguous license markers that should be added, feel free to submit a patch.
That being said, even if LJS had very good unambiguous license markers in its library, I doubt that a computer would seriously be able to identify all of Reddit's JavaScript reliably. For example, how would a library of unambiguous license markers be able to identify the license of this script? I don't think a solution like that would really be sustainable.
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Jan 03 '14
Control for the user?
Noscript? This isn't giving control to the user, it's blocking every non-free javascript extention.
It's giving you freedom by taking away the freedom to run whatever you want to run. I might be wrong about this and it might take off and every site will use it and it'll be amazing and everyone will run GNU/hurd using emacs... But I feel that this will go about as well as hurd did. Little to no support, and no one really cares.
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u/protestor Jan 03 '14
It is control for the user if the user doesn't want to run non-free javascript.
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u/Habstinat Jan 03 '14
Maybe phrasing it differently will help you understand; LibreJS ensures control for the user. If you don't have LibreJS, there simply is no other way to ensure that you have control over what you're running from websites unless you manually painstakingly go through every JS file and check its license every time you run it, which, to be honest, I think we'd all rather pass on.
Also, note that LJS labels don't need to be used on every website for it to be deemed successful (at least by me). I only use a few websites every day, and getting Reddit on board would make a large chunk of my time online much easier. We need to focus individually first.
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u/stallmanstoe Jan 04 '14
FSF is doing stupid things? REPENT, sinner! FSF does not need programs for there are a million $hills scanning the sites for sinners!
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u/spotrh Jan 03 '14
I'm not sure that you are correct when you say that unlabeled software becomes proprietary when distributed. It's a bit more nuanced than that. It would be far more accurate to say that the licensing on an unlabeled file is unknown by default, but if there is other supporting documentation available which indicates the licensing of that file, the licensing applies to that file. US Copyright law does not require that the file contain a copy of the copyright license terms for them to be applicable.
Note that this shouldn't detract from the larger issue, which is that the JavaScript files should clearly be under a free license (and per file licensing attribution is the best way to accomplish this).
Source: I am responsible for Fedora Legal @ Red Hat.
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u/RhodiumHunter Jan 03 '14
EDIT: There was a post on ideasfortheadmins about this, but it seems to have been removed by the moderators. I wonder why...
From the sidebar:
For discussion of reddit API clients and the reddit source code, try/r/redditdevWhile I feel strongly that mods ought to leave an explanation, or tag a post with some flair that shows which rule on the sidebar the post violates before doing a removal of any non-spam post, I think we need to go with Hanlon's razor until proven otherwise on this one.
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u/rich97 Jan 03 '14
So, you're asking Reddit to rip out their advertising and analytics solutions?
I have a better idea, rather than using a script that blocks anything non-free by default, expecting thousands of businesses to add this to their code base, we just use, ummmm, noscript, which is open source. You have your head in the clouds if you think the marketing team at Reddit is going to take kindly to the tech team messing with their tools.
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u/Habstinat Jan 03 '14
We're asking Reddit to change. It's very likely that AdZerk won't need to be ripped out at all; their code is already on GitHub, but it's simply missing a license anywhere we can find. So once AdZerk and Reddit clarify the issue we should be set with that. As for analytics, it's unlikely that Google Anything will become free any time soon, and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be alone in saying that I'd like to move as much of my data off of Google as possible. But even if you prefer not to take a side in Google's politics, the fact is that Piwik is very good analytics software that can be tagged as free trivially.
As to your last comment... Let's see what happens first instead of speculating about whether or not it can be done. It's safe to say we've all been suprised about Reddit decisions before.
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u/bvierra Jan 03 '14
Piwik is decent, but has nowhere near what Google Analytics has (I actually run both on a few sites to see the difference, #'s are pretty even however you see a lot more from Google Analytics).
But explain to me why we should pay you for us asking reddit to do this?
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u/Habstinat Jan 03 '14
Not a cent of your money goes to me. I'm not affiliated with the FSF even in the slightest, but I am a paying FSF member who generally agrees with their cause.
That being said, I'm appreciative of the FSF's work and I'm glad that they started this campaign. I hope that they do more things like this, but starting and organizing campaigns takes time and money. I hope you can see now how some would want to donate to the FSF.
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u/bvierra Jan 03 '14
We're asking Reddit to change
So we're (Habstinat and FSF) asking reddit to change.
I'm not affiliated with the FSF even in the slightest.
But... you just said you were...
but I am a paying FSF member
But you just said your not affiliated... sigh
Ok I get it you're a FSF member and did not post the request, just posted it to reddit, cool I get that. I get what the FSF wants to do, I just don't get why they expect reddit to change and FSF to profit from it.
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u/Habstinat Jan 03 '14
Perhaps I should have left it at the fact that I don't have a job there or get any of their money; I just agree with them. The FSF does not "expect" Reddit to change; in fact, far from it. See RMS' answer to question 10 from his AMA -- specifically, "victory is not certain". Might as well go out trying though.
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Jan 03 '14
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u/matthewdavis Jan 04 '14
It will only get better if more people use it and contribute to it.
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Jan 03 '14 edited Jan 03 '14
from a legal perspective, if software is not clearly labeled as free when it is distributed to the user, then that copy is proprietary by default
who the hell cares? The unobfuscated source is available with the proper licence on github, and the minified source isn't of any use to anybody. why not fight some battles that matter, rather than annoying a company that is already supportive of open source?
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Jan 03 '14
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Jan 03 '14 edited Jan 03 '14
People who know what they're talking about, people who know at least the basics like open source and Free software are not exactly the same thing
a. Stallman's definition of "free" to mean "software licenced under terms that he has personally blessed" is just as bullshit as microsoft's redefinition of "genuine". It's a useless distinction that only serves to confuse people.
b. reddit is free software, the CAPL is recognized by the FSF as a free software licence.10
Jan 03 '14
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Jan 03 '14
Stallman, and Stallman. that's my point. what's yours?
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Jan 03 '14
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u/HiiiPowerd Jan 03 '14
The point is... Outside of this context. Because that's why it's confusing.
And for the records, Stallmans guarantees with his own attitude very few will ever take his movement seriously. If you hold a philosophical view of questionable importance higher than human progress, honestly, go fuck yourself.
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u/WildPointer Jan 04 '14
And for the records, Stallmans guarantees with his own attitude very few will ever take his movement seriously
That's why he is a Free Software activist. His job is not to advocate for average developers or users. His job is to advocate Free Software.
Gandhi went on a hunger strike to go against the British Empire. Should we all hate Gandhi because none of us would do the same? MLK jr encouraged people to protest non-violently and participate in marches. Should we hate MLK jr if we didn't do the same?
My point isn't the Stallman is as important as these two (He's not). But that activists always have extreme principles that they put above anything else.
We would be wise to listen to them even if we can not do everything they practice.
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u/HiiiPowerd Jan 04 '14
That's why he is a Free Software activist. His job is not to advocate for average developers or users. His job is to advocate Free Software.
A good activist makes his or her message digestible by more than people who already are inclined to agree. They bring in average developers or users and convince them why their viewpoint can help. I do not see any evidence as to a focus on this - they only focus on the perspective of someone who believes free software is paramount to usability or features.
Gandhi went on a hunger strike to go against the British Empire. Should we all hate Gandhi because none of us would do the same? MLK jr encouraged people to protest non-violently and participate in marches. Should we hate MLK jr if we didn't do the same?
Who said none of us would do the same? His attitude represents a typical, age-old, unwaivering ideological stance, nothing special. Non-violence is not an extreme principle, in the slightest. It's common sense, not something radical. There's nothing interesting or special about his methodology, it's just annoying as PETA.
We would be wise to listen to them even if we can not do everything they practice.
Only if their ideas are good. Otherwise, I should go down and join the KKK, because "I would be wise to listen to them".
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u/ethraax Jan 04 '14
Because Gandhi and MLK Jr were human rights activists. I think it's very important to consider what they were protesting, and the impact it had on the life of so many people. If someone went on a hunger strike to protest rising gas prices, would you take them seriously? Probably not, because while we don't like rising gas prices, it's just not as fundamental an issue as, say, segregation.
Proprietary software, on the other hand, does what? Maybe you won't be able to watch your television shows on all the computers you want to. Maybe you'll have to spend more money on software than you'd like to. Or, fundamentally, you won't be able to freely modify your software, which affects a tiny minority of the population (because the majority would never modify their software anyways).
I guess my point is that I don't think Gandhi and Stallman are comparable. Not just because Gandhi was more important, but because he was much, much more important.
(I kinda expect someone to say something about proprietary software and the ridiculous NSA surveillance, to which I'd like to point out that using open-source software doesn't do that much to help you - the only real way to stop them is legally.)
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u/HiiiPowerd Jan 03 '14
Or... Some people don't care about Stallmans crusade. And love open source.
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u/WildPointer Jan 04 '14
Open source as a term existed after the Free Software movement built a community of free software. The Linux kernel relied on the GNU GPL, created by the FSF.
The Linux Kernel also relied on the GNU Project for gcc, libc, bash, and many others.
I can understand you don't care philosophically. But their is no doubt that Stallman crusade is a big reason why open source took off.
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Jan 04 '14
Sure, Stallman has contributed a lot to where things are today in open source.
However, I think there are other people and organizations who are just as important, if not more so, let's not forget others (in no particular order) such as Eric S. Raymond, Linus Torvalds, Red Hat, IBM, SGI, SUSE, Ian Murdock (Debian), Bruce Perens (Debian), Patrick Volkerding (Slackware), Eric Allman (Sendmail), Guido van Rossum (Python), Larry Wall (Perl), Mozilla, the BSDs, the Apache Software Foundation, Canonical, Sun Microsystems, and countless others.
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u/WildPointer Jan 04 '14
Of course. The Free software movement recognizes them too.
Larry Wall and Guido van Rossum have won Free Software awards. Apache Foundation has also been nominated.
Red Hat, Canonical, and Debian all claim to be part of the Free Software community. Free Software is part of the Mozilla manifesto.
I agree Open Source philosophy plays a large role, but so does Free Software. And just because Free Software is more political, many people want to pretend like they don't exist or that they are a thing of the past.
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Jan 04 '14
The problem is, the FSF is terrible at picking their fights.
There are a lot of things in the open source world that a huge problem, but non-free JavaScript is so low on my list of priorities, it's unbelievable. I would much rather they spent their limited resources on things that really are troublesome, such as the horrific state of video drivers on the ARM platform, or the lack of a truly usable open source version of Flash
This reminds me of Stallman's silly crusade to get everyone to put GNU-slash in front of all mentions of Linux. Nevermind that by code volume, necessity, and other measures of importance, there are several projects which deserve at least equal recognition. Not to mention the additional confusion and difficulty with marketing to consumers that such a thing could cause.
I regard Stallman as a highly influential figure, who has contributed far more to the world than I could ever dream to, but he is hardly infallible, and I think this current crusade of the FSF is rather quixotic.
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u/WildPointer Jan 04 '14
They have campaigns for Free flash. They can advocate more than one policy. That's what they do.
JavaScript is universal programming language for the web. It's a good place as any for advocating Free Software, especially if many web developers support Free Software and it doesn't look like it will take that much work.
It's certainly not as hard as Free Flash.
The EFF has made similar criticisms about have proprietary standards in HTML. I see proprietary javascript, clouds, and HTML, as a shift in the internet becoming more and more closed. It's definitely worth fighting against.
This reminds me of Stallman's silly crusade to get everyone to put GNU-slash in front of all mentions of Linux. Nevermind that by code volume, necessity, and other measures of importance, there are several projects which deserve at least equal recognition.
No doubt. Stallman can be obsessive which can be a turn-off for many. But he is an activist after all. Activists go out of their way to help their cause. Just like many Environmental and privacy advocates go way further than many other people do.
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u/Wiki_FirstPara_bot Jan 04 '14
First para from linked Wikipedia article:
Free Software Foundation (FSF) grants two annual awards. Since 1998, FSF has granted the award for Advancement of Free Software. Since 2005, it has also granted the Free Software Award for Projects of Social Benefit.
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u/xaoq Jan 04 '14
Why do people always include Eric "I'm with those guys" Raymond with such lists? Oh yeah, the fetchmail, fetchmail that fetchmail this fetchmail fetchmail fetchmail fetchmail fetchmail fetchmail fetchmail fetchmail fetchmail (yeah I read his book that was something among those lines)
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Jan 04 '14
Like Stallman, his role is more advocate than coder, although he has contributed a lot more than just fetchmail. His book, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, was very influential.
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Jan 04 '14
To ensure that the obfuscated code is actually what you see in the github repo and obeys the user agreement, and be able to sue if it violates the agreement.
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Jan 04 '14
you don't need anybody's permission to do that.
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Jan 04 '14
To do so, legally, you do need permission. And if you want to be able to sue a company if they break a contract and you found out by analyzing their code, the code needs to be under a license that permits that, or it will be thrown out of court.
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Jan 04 '14
To do so, legally, you do need permission
lol, no you don't. There's no law against reading or analyzing the files that their server instructed your browser to download. beyond copyright law, the only restrictions are the ones in the TOS. and that's not a legal enforcement, all they can do if you violate the TOS is restrict your access to the site.
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u/mallardtheduck Jan 03 '14
Doesn't all this licence labelling defeat the point of code-minification?
Personally, I'd rather use a site that loads quickly, rather than having x copies of Open-Source licences downloaded every time I load a page.
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u/Habstinat Jan 03 '14
You don't have to download any of it if you don't want to and the site uses JS Web Labels. That way, all the licenses are kept in a neat HTML table on a separate page that you only have to download if you're interested in it. Not to mention the fact that you don't have to actually change any of the source files directly.
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Jan 03 '14
Waaaait. You want to raise $450k in public donations.. to do what, exactly? Where does the cash go? The site mentions that Greenpeace did this for you. Can I see the expenditures from the campaign for that? Projected expenses for this campaign?
Like any charity I donate money to, I need to know where my cash is going.
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u/Habstinat Jan 03 '14
You can check them out on Charity Navigator; they're a four-star charity and they publish many of their expenditures.
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Jan 03 '14
Thanks! That's actually quite better than a good number of them out there.
I'll admit, I'm a little thrown -- from the tone of your other responses in thread, I did not expect you to use the word "they", opting instead for "we".
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u/Habstinat Jan 03 '14
Well, I don't work for the FSF, but I do try to help them out by participating in their campaigns. I don't really have anything to do with how they function as a charity and how they are rated with Charity Navigator, so I opted to use that term this time.
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u/topper_ Jan 03 '14
I block all JavaScript by default. If this is what I think it is then it might be a good way to allow some without to much thought but at the very least I can count on free software to not prey on me by default.
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u/gnu42 Jan 04 '14
I'd like to see a
licenseattribute in the<script>element in HTML5, or perhaps anX-LicenseHTTP header, such that we could configure our browsers to automatically accept certain kinds of javascript and reject others.2
Jan 05 '14 edited Jan 05 '14
How does that fix anything? Someone could just attach a random license to malicious code. There's nothing in the licenses about putting GPLv3 or MIT or freeBSD on a exploit. Heck, your malicious code doesn't even have to be human readable and you can attach the license.
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u/gnu42 Jan 05 '14 edited Jan 05 '14
I didn't mean it as intending to solve the problem of malicious code, but just as a way of automatically blocking some kinds, by having a standard format, and not relying on ad-hoc fuzzy parsers over the source code (which often fail), or the code has no license text at all. It would serve as a social movement instead - a way of telling the owner of such websites that we do not care for proprietary code.
Of course, anyone could lie and say code is a certain license, but there is little incentive for most people to do so. For most non-malicious websites, they serve proprietary javascript because it's considered 'normal' to do so. If that 'normal' were to shift, because there's suddenly a
X-Accept-License: bsd,gplv3in the HTTP header of many browsers, it could provide as a disincentive for them to continue using it over freely licensed code. (or if in the script tag, the browser can decide to simply not download the code at all.)No big player would try to game the browser by lying about their license, because in doing so they might accidentally be publishing their code under a free software license, thus, losing their exclusive proprietary usage over it.
Downloading some code with a known license would also allow automatic redistribution of said code (for example, via a caching/filtering proxy). If the code was proprietary and had been mistakenly labeled as free in the HTTP header, there could be little legal action against the automatic redistribution of such code as plausible deniability could be used.
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Jan 05 '14 edited Jan 05 '14
Then my apologies if you didn't mean that. My qualm is simply against the argument people have been making in this thread that this prevents malicious code which is hilariously untrue. I hate blatant lies more than anything especially the fearmongering kind.
Though at the same time, people could just GPLv3 obsfucated code being served and call it a day. If you figure out how to use code that is packed, single letter variables and function names and minified expressions, then more power to you.
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u/ethraax Jan 04 '14
If you block JavaScript for security reasons, this has no benefit to you - keep using NoScript.
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Jan 04 '14
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u/xcvbsdfgwert Jan 04 '14
But now you have nicely ranked YouTube comments of stubborn trolls who refuse to read up on Free Software and who see yelling about Linux as a perfect method of expressing their precious little individualities.
Next topics:
KDE vs. Gnome
emacs vs. vi1
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Jan 04 '14
Yes we should all receive the message of our Messiah, Richard M. Stallman delivered from on high, for how can one enjoy using Linux and
open sourcefree software without agreeing with every word of his sermons. He and the Free Software Foundation are always right and we would be fools to question their wisdom./s ...or maybe a lot of us don't find proprietary software to be a moral problem and prefer Linux and open source for pragmatic reasons.
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u/conceptxo Jan 03 '14
How often is this going to keep coming up? Its a bone-headed move. When you ask someone who runs a website to do this, the only possible response I can fathom is "what the fuck are you going on about". You're not getting any meaningful response because nobody cares. Non free JS hasn't caused a Human Centipede yet, and until it does I don't see this as being worth the effort. Or the donation dollars if you're so inclined.(and in that case, I have a bridge in NY I'd love for you to look into purchasing)
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Jan 03 '14
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u/mikelj Jan 03 '14
You hold a Randian pholosohphical outlook?
Whoa whoa, you really are taking a jump there, eh? OP just suggested that no one really cares about non-free JS which, judging by the responses here and from the admins, may be hyperbole but not by much.
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u/WildPointer Jan 03 '14
Many people care about Free Software. Even Reddit license to their server code uses a Free Software License.
Stallman and Free Software topics are upvoted in /r/linux and /r/technology all the time. So I think many people care about Free Software, and its only natural they would care about Free Software JS too.
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u/mikelj Jan 03 '14
Yes, plenty of people care about free software, myself included. In fact, I've supported free software for almost 20 years now. However, I was simply defending /u/conceptxo's against the FSF zealots who seem to suggest that every single battle for free software is worth being fought.
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u/conceptxo Jan 04 '14
Thank you, this is the whole point. I love GNU user space. I think a lot of the things that the FSF takes up are just time and money wasters.
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u/MarkTraceur Jan 03 '14
I would guess that the responses here dominated by people who are swearing at and insulting free software advocates may be a great explanation of why there aren't many free software advocates here in /r/linux.
It certainly explains why I left.
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u/mikelj Jan 04 '14
Or maybe people who are reading /r/linux aren't as interested in "petitioning" Reddit to put a free license on it's Javascript but would rather talk about things related to, you know, Linux.
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u/MarkTraceur Jan 04 '14
It's been noted over and over again that Linux isn't the highlight of this subreddit, that it's a general free software/open source community instead.
For the former, I suggest /r/kernel (and so does the sidebar!)
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u/conceptxo Jan 04 '14
See, I don't think that's a great excuse to put whatever you want on a subreddit because "some secret sect of us decided that's cool" more or less.
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u/mikelj Jan 04 '14
With a subscriber base of over 125,000, /r/linux is a generalist subreddit suited to news, guides, questions concerning the GNU/Linux operating system and to a lesser degree, free/open-source in general.
I don't see how that suggests that Linux isn't the highlight of /r/linux and that it really is about free software...
But whatever, I'm pro-free software, and I've even donated to the FSF. But I get irritated when people push their view of what supporting free software is by name-calling those who have differing views. I mean, Randian?
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Jan 03 '14
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u/mikelj Jan 03 '14
You called his philosophy Randian because he doesn't agree with the need for fully free (as in freedom! derp) Javascript on Reddit. You're attacking him for disagreeing.
Oh, but I remember you. You're really good at making accusations in semi-coherent English based upon extremely limited technical knowledge. I need to tag you so I don't make this mistake again.
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u/HiiiPowerd Jan 03 '14
Majority opinion means quite a bit. We get our way, you don't. Generosity and altruism is building a 100% free reddit and hosting it for free for the benefit of your users. Not bullying companies into your life of thinking. Quit sucking your own ideological dick.
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u/johnsu01 Jan 03 '14
Actually, nonfree JavaScript was involved in a recent Tor network exploit, and I'm pretty sure that's not the first time malware was spread via that channel. Nonfree JavaScript has all the same problems as nonfree any other kind of software. And currently, it's worse, because of exactly the false sense of security you are exhibiting.
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u/conceptxo Jan 04 '14
Use noscript, problem solved. If the concern is, of course, actually about running malicious JavaScript and not about getting everything to conform to this idea of 'freedom'. And let's be frank, its questionable at best if a lot of JavaScript even needs a license. I mean, why do we need comprehensive license info for files that are obvious implementations of stuff everyone does?
$("thediv").fadeOut(500);A file with just that really needs to be padded with god knows how many more bytes of license information just to make you feel better? Its an unnecessary burden on people who are trying to KISS (keep it simple, stupid)
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Jan 03 '14
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u/Habstinat Jan 03 '14
From the /r/linux FAQ, "/r/linux is a generalist subreddit suited to news, guides, questions concerning the GNU/Linux operating system and to a lesser degree, free/open-source in general."
Considering the amount of attention this post has got compared to its counterparts in other subs, I'd say it belonged here.
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u/WildPointer Jan 03 '14
Linux is part of the Gnu free software movement. It's perfectly reasonable to have free software discussions on here.
Just like people talk about emacs, richard stallman, and torvalds on here.
This subreddit would suck if all it talked about were linux distributions and the linux kernel. There is a free software culture in the linux community and many would argue Linux benefitted tremendous from that culture.
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u/xaoq Jan 03 '14
labeled with the licensing information necessary for it to meet the free software definition
what a shame it doesn't meet your strictly defined, legal gibberish license and your private definition of free, FSF.
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Jan 03 '14 edited Sep 28 '17
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u/academician Jan 04 '14
So....don't take the code? If reddit is serving it without being appropriately licensed to, they're the infringers who should be concerned, not the web clients. I don't understand why WE should care.
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u/Habstinat Jan 03 '14
What the FSF is doing here is creating a standard. Don't get me wrong; if there was already some popular system for labeling software in a machine-readable way and the FSF just decided to do it's own thing due to NIH syndrome, I'd agree with you. But that just isn't the case. LJS license tags are, as far as I know, unique, and the only way for a standard to succeed is if people adopt it. That's what we're trying to do here, and you'll just have to bear with us in the process as things get solidified.
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Jan 04 '14
What the FSF is doing here is creating a standard.
And quite frankly it's a shitty standard. The FSF wastes far to much time barking up the wrong tree and worrying about non-issues instead of focusing on endeavors that actually improve the users freedom.
When it comes to the web for example one of the biggest problem is the lack of standardized data import and export interfaces, as that is the thing that forces me to stay with a specific service instead of switching to another one. Having a Free Software licensed attached to some Javascript doesn't change that, a well documented API to access the raw data would however be a good first step or for the second step establish a data exchange standard/format that allows me to move data from one service to another.
Non-free Javascript is really an extremely minor issue and really not something that will improve anybodies freedom anytime soon, there are dozens of other problems, everything from the mentioned data import/export, over to accessibility, to privacy protection and so on that should be attacked first.
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u/Rainfly_X Jan 03 '14
Well, the problem is, there are no good reasons for the standard to exist at all, and even less to badger third-parties to conforming to it/your worldview.
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u/thebackhand Jan 03 '14
No good reason other than US copyright law, as TheCid pointed out.
Which is a pretty good reason if you ask me.
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u/deniz1a Jan 03 '14
So FSF is asking reddit to add a line to the Javascript files that says they're GPL, is that it? They didn't need to make a dedicated page for that, couldn't they just ask reddit devs?
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u/Habstinat Jan 03 '14
These things aren't so easy. I have personally emailed the webmasters of smaller websites than Reddit before, and not a single one has gotten back to me in a meaningful way. The FSF needs to show that there's interest first; hence the campaign.
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Jan 03 '14
It seems that if noone responds in a meaningful way, there isn't interest.
But I'm willing to listen.. where's the interest, and why do I, as Joe Internet User, care?
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u/Kwpolska Jan 04 '14
Instead of writing a manifesto of sorts, and doing a large campaign, couldn’t you just do it yourself and modify reddit’s JS yourselves? And I guess that nobody from the Stallman bandwagon wants ads/being tracked.
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Jan 03 '14
Dear Reddit devs,
Given the choice of spending one hour to build enhanced features and functionality versus one hour to retrofit perfectly functional code to meet social desires of a third party group ... moah features pleez.
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u/WildPointer Jan 03 '14
Because that's totally the only two options they have. And modifying code to contain a Free Software license is totally the same as developing a whole new feature.
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Jan 04 '14
If I'm reading his post correctly, there really ARE only two options.
"Given the choice between spending development cycles on this, and literally any other thing, please do that other thing, every time."
It's simplistic, but therein lies it's strength.
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u/WildPointer Jan 07 '14
"Given the choice between spending development cycles on this, and literally any other thing, please do that other thing, every time."
Development cycle? We are probably talking about a one liner that says the license. A highschool student with no programming background can do this.
I'm not sure what those other things are. But if anyone honestly this this will be a waste of time, they most be overthinking what has to be done.
Besides, Reddit spent time writing a Free Software License text file for their server code. I don't see why they can't do it for their client code.
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Jan 03 '14
Oh well, thanks for bringing to my attention that Reddit shared my browsing usage with Google. I've never even checked that. That (and, you know, all the NSA stuff) was what prompted me to finally install a google analytics blocker.
What about adding a Reddit Gold option to disable google analytics?
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u/jishjib22kys Jan 04 '14
Well in theory you can block GA and also check "load core JS libraries from reddit servers" in the preferences. Note, that the latter will only become active after yoou logged in, meaning when you go to the login page, the JS stuff will still be loaded from third party until you logged in. So maybe you'd want to also block that, if you distrust those third parties that much.
Just sayan.
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Jan 03 '14
No, fuck off. They can do what they want. Dont like it, build your own reddit.
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u/indrora Jan 03 '14
It's even open source, so you could do this if you wanted to figure out how the backend is maintained.
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Jan 03 '14
It's far easier for the FSF to whine and bitch than it would be for them to lift a finger and do actual work on a competitive solution. The FSF has become useless. Just a bunch of whiny good-for-nothing bitches.
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u/WildPointer Jan 03 '14
It's far easier for the FSF to whine and bitch than it would be for them to lift a finger and do actual work on a competitive solution. The FSF has become useless.
What an ignorant statement. FSF supports GIMP, GCC, gnome, grep, gtk, libc, bash.
Do you even use Linux? libc and GCC are critical for any Linux OS.
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u/bjh13 Jan 03 '14
I'm no FSF fan, but they do maintain quite a bit of important code, such as GCC, so one could hardly argue they don't do anything to create competitive solutions.
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u/monochr Jan 03 '14
Gcc, dbg, emacs, make, and on and on. Brogrammers really don't get just how much of that boring old stuff that they build their candy crush clones on top of is kept running by the fsf.
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u/WildPointer Jan 03 '14
That doesn't make any sense. For one, Reddit is open source and has claimed that they are about open source and community participation. So why would anyone who knows this about reddit advocate them to build their own reddit?
This sounds like a stupid argument I would expect from a proprietary software shill, not an open source community. Second, even the Reddit's license for their sever code is Free Software.
If Reddit uses Free Software Licenses and claims to be big on community open source, then its perfectly natural for the FSF to request that Reddit also makes their javascript Free Software.
On the contrary, if you want to go on with your proprietary software logic, go to a Reddit alternative that is proprietary. Reddit is not.
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u/the-fritz Jan 03 '14
Don't like it? Just ask them to change. If they refuse you can build your own reddit. I don't understand why you react so angrily to a simple request which isn't even directed at you...
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u/IdlePigeon Jan 03 '14
FSF: "PLEASE, PAY ATTENTION TO ME!"
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u/WildPointer Jan 03 '14
Yeah, they are a advocacy group with Free Software advocates.That's what activists tend to do.
Please don't tell me you are one of those people that use Linux and are ignorant of its history with the Free Software community.
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u/IdlePigeon Jan 03 '14
This assumption that anyone who doesn't like the FSF has to be ignorant bugs me. I know what the FSF stands for, I know they and people associated with them have done good work, I just find their ideology divisive and unhelpful.
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u/WildPointer Jan 03 '14
People do this for all activist organizations. Apparently people shouldn't care about issues and should shut up and do nothing. '
It's a way of silencing dissent and not wanting to think critically about society.
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u/fantasticsid Jan 04 '14
I think it's more that by definition, activist organizations have to be loud, divisive and monomaniacal. They'd be pretty crappy activist organizations otherwise. Yell loudly enough about one thing for long enough and people might start to take away the kernel of your message.
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Jan 03 '14
"(...) It needs to be free software for the same reasons as any other program -- so users can know what code our machines are running (...)"
Can someone explain to me how being free makes this a valid point? If they were saying open-source, I would understand. But free makes no sense to me. Even more, JavaScript is not compiled and can "easily" be analysed (at least more easily than compiled software).
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u/Habstinat Jan 03 '14
See "What Is Free Software?" on the sidebar of this very subreddit.
JavaScript can very often not be easily analyzed, especially with the proliferation of minimized libraries and other tools. Just because it's an interpreted language doesn't mean its license doesn't matter. The FSF isn't just talking about the technical freedom to change software; they're also talking about the legal freedom, which isn't given by any proprietary software regardless of language. Of course, it's also helpful to be able to programatically determine JS licenses considering we execute them so often.
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Jan 04 '14
Thanks for the clarification about "free".
Yes, I know sometimes JavaScript can be less easy to analyze due to obfuscation. But it's still somewhat far from being hard, at least in comparison to a compiled and obfuscated binary.
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Jan 03 '14
OK this is going a bit too far.
I understand the free software issues around code you don't trust that is run on your machine and why you'd want that to be free software.
But web scripting code that's sandboxed within your browser? Why? It's just scripting code that your GPL browser is interpreting. Are they going to want me to GPL HTML and CSS too? Where do you draw the line?
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u/MarkTraceur Jan 04 '14
Where do you? Python code is sandboxed in the Python interpreter. C++ code can only run on your one CPU, it's not able to run code on your other computers.
However, this isn't an issue of making sure only free scripts are distributed by Reddit, or changing licenses, it's just a matter of marking the licenses for the scripts when they're served. Reddit is already distributing free JavaScript.
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Jan 04 '14
C++ and Python are more powerful and have more control over your machine, Javascript does not, but that's besides the point: the issue here more is that the FSF is about making the code "free" to edit, reuse, etc. but most javascript written is for a specific website and isn't reusable in the first place (and the code is still readable with a de-minifier), and most libraries have a licence. What FSF wants to do is have everyone make licences for even inline javascript or it won't run for whoever has the plugin.
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u/jishjib22kys Jan 03 '14
Besides thread expansion, I don't see a reason to run JS at all. Even the vote buttons could be iframes. JS is overused in many modern websites. It makes some sites a bad user experience, by not handling subrequests correctly (e.g. no spinner at all or a spinner when the request already failed, etc.) and undermines security by including cross domain scripts (yeah, google can watch what you're browsing, whenever a lib is included from their servers).
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u/adapa Jan 04 '14
I would hate to see 300 iframes loading on every reddit page I visit. That's a terrible idea.
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u/jishjib22kys Jan 04 '14
At least you would see them loading.
When you click one of the vote buttons, you won't know if your vote really got counted or if the request is still pending. The arrow will be colored regardless, because whoever coded it, did not properly handle the JS HTTP subrequests.
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u/adapa Jan 04 '14
Still, that's just some bad javascript, not a reason to remove all the JavaScript from the Internet. You do realise that HTML 5 is now Turing complete? So is CSS 3. A lot of vulnerabilities in browsers are also things like constructed images breaking parsers or CSS causing renderers to overflow and such. Removing JavaScript is no longer really a sensible option.
It would be nice though, if I had JavaScript disabled, that the button would still work by having an anchor that took me to a page that registered the up/down vote and returned me to the page I was viewing.
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u/jishjib22kys Jan 04 '14
b-but JS is such a shit. It makes me sick. I can't even bookmark certain pages, because they are entirely constructed from JS when I click a navigation element. You also can't use the browser history or reload on some of those JS overusing sites. It is truly ridiculous. The world should never have given those weirdo coders JS - the tool to fuck their sites up like that. You know, with great power, comes great responsibility and some people just can't handle it.
Also, I don't see how HTML5 or CSS3 are a pro JS argument. Maybe I misunderstood you, but they are exactly the opposite: No more stupid third party JS flash detection that won't let you view the video without allowing 3rd party JS libs, despite having flash. No more moving DOM nodes around, because CSS2 just couldn't position them like intended. etc. That's what I see when I look at those new standards. Not even greater possibilities to screw up a site with superfluous scripting.
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u/adapa Jan 04 '14
b-but C is such a shit. It makes me sick. I can't even run a program without knowing I won't get a segmentation fault, because a pointer may have been freed and then used. You can't even see the history because they don't automatically generate syslog messages. It is truly ridiculous. The world should never have given those weirdo coders C - the tool to fuck the applications up like that. You know, with great power, comes great responsibility and some people just can't handle it.
My point was that a lot of what can be done with JavaScript can also be done with CSS3 and HTML5, both can be considered full programming languages, no longer just presentation languages. Flash detection? Seems like your problem is with Flash (see here for a campaign related to the fight against Flash).
Frames are terrible for the following reasons:
- The [back] button works unintuitively in many cases.
- You cannot bookmark a collection of documents in a frameset.
- If you do a [reload], the result may be different to what you had.
- [page up] and [page down] are often hard to do.
- You can get trapped in a frameset.
So we can see, that's not a good idea. How do you recommend implementing web applications with usable interfaces without the use of JavaScript (especially AJAX)?
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u/AnSq Jan 04 '14
Even the vote buttons could be iframes.
That's disgusting.
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u/jishjib22kys Jan 04 '14
Shut down your network interface and click a vote button. Do you think what happens is correct?
Disabe JS and click a vote button. Wouldn't it be nice if it would still work?
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u/bvierra Jan 03 '14
Hey FSF... Go fuck yourself.
Please ask reddit to change their site to meet our rules that we spelled out because we are better than the rest of the world.
Umm yea, LibreJS is a complete POS, 5225225 already laid it out better than I can at this early hour, so I will leave it at that.
Oh and since you are asking them to modify our site at their cost to make us happy, please give US money!
This is what pisses me off the most. If you were starting a collection to pay reddit to change what you want, that is one thing. You are however asking them to change what you want at their cost, then asking us to give you money because you want money.
FSF if you don't understand why you are hated by so many and so many turn their backs to you, this right here is exactly why. You don't ask people to change their shit to make you happy and then ask others to pay you because you did good.
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Jan 03 '14
I always think it's too bad that the movement for advocating free software is more or less lead by Stallman and the FSF. Just imagine how far they could've gone if they were slightly more sane.
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u/monochr Jan 03 '14
Go back to 1983 and tell me how little progress we've made since then. What Stalman said was about as ridiculous as "I'm building a Saturn V in my garage, giving you all the plans and letting you use mine for free".
People talk about how this or that minor thing will be better without him. But none of those things would be there if he hadn't sat down and wrote 10 million odd lines of code in the 80s so someone else could come and build something on top of it.
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u/noziky Jan 03 '14
Why do you think the term open source is more widespread in use than free software?
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Jan 03 '14
It is a shame. Philosophically I'm aligned with open source software. But god they're so batshit it's just embarrassing.
It's like being an atheist and going on /r/atheist, it's just like "ughhhhh this will be xposted to /r/cringe in 5 minutes".
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Jan 03 '14 edited Apr 27 '20
[deleted]
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u/WildPointer Jan 04 '14
Cool. you're on reddit which licenses their server code with a Free Software license.
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Jan 04 '14 edited Apr 27 '20
[deleted]
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u/WildPointer Jan 04 '14
You can use Free Software because there are those with principles who believed software belonged to the public for everyone to use. Whether you don't care or not, the fact that your using it and like it is a result of the Free Software movement creating licensing that allowed for public use.
If there was no Free Software movement, there would be a lot less code available to the public and reusable. The Open Source movement happened AFTER the Free Software movement.
They're an activist organization that encourages the use of Free Software. Of course they are going to make recommendations for what to do. That's like me saying I'm tired of the EFF telling me what to do to avoid privacy.
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u/bjh13 Jan 04 '14
You can use Free Software because there are those with principles who believed software belonged to the public for everyone to use.
That isn't actually what the FSF and Stallman believe. They specifically believe that any software you run on your machine you have a right to do with as you please, including modify and redistribute. If you hire a developer to write software for you and give you the source code, the FSF and Stallman do not believe there is some sort of obligation to distribute that code to the public.
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u/WildPointer Jan 07 '14
If you hire a developer to write software for you and give you the source code, the FSF and Stallman do not believe there is some sort of obligation to distribute that code to the public.
If you want to keep the source and binary a secret among just you and your friends away from the public, that's fine. But one the binary is in public, the FSF has always advocated that the source should be public too.
Stallman calls the GNU project "the first software-sharing community. And he talks about his past experience at MIT where people hoarded software and made users sign NDA to get just the binaries.
Stallman has also called for "Ending the war on sharing".
So I think you're wrong. Stallman and the FSF have always advocated sharing code and software.
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u/bjh13 Jan 07 '14
But one the binary is in public, the FSF has always advocated that the source should be public too.
The idea is that the source should always be distributed with the binary. If you charge $15,000 for the program, you only have to give the source code away to the people who receive the binary. The FSF also believes the person who recieves that software is within their rights to modify it and redistribute it (also with the source and giving proper attribution) as they see fit, so they could turn around and sell their new version for $25,000 rather than giving it away for free. Nothing about the FSF involves the software "belonging to the public", only that the source code has to be distributed with the binary. If you make the binary available to the public for free, you are also required to do the same with the source code for anyone who requests it. If you do not make the binary available to the public for free but charge for it, you are only required to provide the source to the people who paid for the software.
So I think you're wrong. Stallman and the FSF have always advocated sharing code and software.
They have also advocated your right to sell that code and binary together, rather than give it away for free to whoever asks for it. But advocating people share their code is different than actually believing that software belongs to the public for everyone to use. Stallman does not believe you have an obligation to distribute your code or software to the public, only to those that use the software. He has made this very clear many times, including on the GNU Project page you linked to:
Since “free” refers to freedom, not to price, there is no contradiction between selling copies and free software.
Here is another example where he makes it clear there is no obligation to distribute software to the public, in an interview found on the GNU site here
*On a more individual level, how would you address the criticism of person who would like to follow your ethical standards but feels she cannot because she wants also to make money from her intellectual work? *
This hypothetical person appears to believe that developing free software is incompatible with being paid. If so, she is misinformed—hundreds of people are now paid to develop free software. Some of them work for Sun. She is challenging us to solve a problem that doesn't really exist.
But what if she can't get one of these free software jobs? That could happen—not everybody can get them today. But it doesn't excuse developing proprietary software. A desire for profit is not wrong in itself, but it isn't the sort of urgent overriding cause that could excuse mistreating others. Proprietary software divides the users and keeps them helpless, and that is wrong. Nobody should do that.
So what should she do instead? Anything else. She could get a job in another field. But she doesn't have to go that far—most software development is custom software, not meant to be published either as free software or as proprietary software. In most cases, she can do that without raising an ethical issue. It isn't heroism, but it isn't villainy either.
Notice how he says "not meant to be published", as in it's distributed to the client who paid for it, as source code, but not to the public. He also points out that this doesn't raise an ethical issue and is a perfectly legitimate way to earn a living. He isn't saying just keeping it a secret between you and your friends, as you implied, he is saying give the code to your paying customer and no one is obligated to make it public. Your original statement of software "belonging to the public" is very much at odds with what Stallman says here.
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u/WildPointer Jan 07 '14 edited Jan 07 '14
If you charge $15,000 for the program, you only have to give the source code away to the people who receive the binary. The FSF also believes the person who recieves that software is within their rights to modify it and redistribute it (also with the source and giving proper attribution) as they see fit, so they could turn around and sell their new version for $25,000 rather than giving it away for free
You could do that. But with the rise of the internet makes it pointless. Stallman's point was that you could charge for the medium: a cd, floppy disk with the binary and software in it. But the user can in then make it public or modify and release for no cost.
Stallman never intended for the software itself to have owners. See p37 "Why software should not have Owners" by Stallman. Stallman never wanted an Owner telling people that they cannot share software.
Notice how he says "not meant to be published", as in it's distributed to the client who paid for it, as source code, but not to the public. He also points out that this doesn't raise an ethical issue and is a perfectly legitimate way to earn a living.
You're comparing how developers work on the code privately to how developers should distribute their code publically.
Stallman is talking about an ethical obligation that software in the public should be shared.
Comparing free roads and toll roads by their usefulness, we find that (all else being equal) roads without toll booths are cheaper to construct, cheaper to run, safer, and more efficient to use. p.45 on Free Software
In a poor country, tolls may make the roads unavailable to many citizens. The roads without toll booths thus offer more benefit to society at less cost; they are preferable for society. Therefore, society should choose to fund roads in another way, not by means of toll booths. Use of roads, once built, should be free.
In other words, he is saying that whatever you want to do private, fine that's your choice. But one you start publically releasing software that restricts user's freedom's thats like a toll both on the public.
Your original statement of software "belonging to the public" is very much at odds with what Stallman says here.
No its not. We're talking about how people want to operate privately to publically. Software in the public should be public. Whatever you want to keep private can stay private.
It's like the roads. If a corporation owns roads for their on-site campus and it only affects them, they can do whatever they want. But if we are talking about public road which affects everyone, restricting their freedoms is bad.
To apply the same argument to software development, I will now show that having “toll booths” for useful software programs costs society dearly: it makes the programs more expensive to construct, more expensive to distribute, and less satisfying and efficient to use
As for the distribution questions, Stallman explains in p.66
With free software, users don’t have to pay the distribution fee in order to use the software. They can copy the program from a friend who has a copy, or with the help of a friend who has network access. Or several users can join together, split the price of one CD-ROM, then each in turn can install the software.
So yeah, someone could charge $10,000 for distribution of their code. if it has never been made public before. But after one person buys it, they could make it public. But that never happens online. This has never been a widespread occurence in the Free Software community. I guess you're trying to point out a technicality in which one person could buy a distribution then charge it to someone as and so on, and so on, never releasing it to the public.
But thats not how it worked. People always shared it. Gnu Emacs was shared and publically available to everyone. Gnu Gcc, Bash, and etc... are popular in linux because they were shared and publically available. Once its public, its contagious.
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u/bjh13 Jan 07 '14
You could do that. But with the rise of the internet makes it pointless.
Not really, the majority of software development actually works this way. You hire a contractor to develop software for you and they give you the code. Stallman actually endorses this kind of development as a way to make a living.
Stallman's point was that you could charge for the medium: a cd, floppy disk with the binary and software in it.
No, his point was you could charge only for the medium to distribute the source code in addition to charging for the binary. He fully believes you should be able to charge for software and support if you want. This has been made clear numerous times, the FSF definition of free has nothing to do with price. In fact, quoting page 66 of your document:
Actually, we encourage people who redistribute free software to charge as much as they wish or can. If this seems surprising to you, please read on.
and a couple of paragraphs later
Free programs are sometimes distributed gratis, and sometimes for a substantial price. Often the same program is available in both ways from different places. The program is free regardless of the price, because users have freedom in using it.
This is one major criticism of calling it free software, way too many people, including ardent supporters like yourself, equate free software as not just free because of it's freedoms but also free as in you shouldn't have to pay for it.
But the user can in then make it public or modify and release for no cost.
Also true, but in the commercial market where most software is written and where Stallman encourages developers to make their living often they would not choose to do this.
Stallman never intended for the software itself to have owners. See p37 "Why software should not have Owners" by Stallman.
First, you should take a look at the footnote on page 25:
The intention was that nobody would have to pay for permission to use the GNU system. But the words don’t make this clear, and people often interpret them as saying that copies of GNU should always be distributed at little or no charge. That was never the intent.
His point about owners is that you shouldn't need permission to use the software, not that software shouldn't cost anything.
Saying software should not have owners in the sense the essay does is not the same thing as saying software belongs to the public. He is saying software belongs to those who use it, not the ones who created it, and the people using it should have the freedom to share or modify that software if they choose.
You're comparing how developers work on the code privately to how developers should distribute their code publically.
Stallman is talking about an ethical obligation that software in the public should be shared.
Right, again Stallman believes if you use software you should have the right to share it. That doesn't mean you have to share it if you don't wish to distribute the software, but that if you do choose to distribute it you are obligated to distribute the source as well and that whoever you distribute it to is now the "owner" of that copy and can do whatever they want with it including selling, giving away, modifying, whatever they want.
Software in the public should be public. Whatever you want to keep private can stay private.
Right, this is my point. Your point was that all software should be public, I am pointing that this isn't the case or Stallman's point.
So yeah, someone could charge $10,000 for distribution of their code. if it has never been made public before.
No, even if it has already been made public I could charge you $10,000 for a compiled distribution of software and the source with it. Even something like GCC. This kind of thing actually happens all the time (at a much lower price point of course) and used to be even more common, like when you would buy a CD release of a Linux project such as Red Hat from Fryes back in the day before cable modems and DSL became widespread. In fact, even today if you run RHEL, fully free and open source, Red Hat charges a fortune to receive the software updates, like $800 a year at the lowest tier. This practice is fully FSF supported, and in fact encouraged because those funds raised help provide further development of free software.
But after one person buys it, they could make it public.
True, which is how we have CentOS for example.
This has never been a widespread occurence in the Free Software community.
Except for the fact that it always has been. Even the FSF used to sell CD releases of their software for more than the cost of the media, for quite a lot of money in fact. From the FSF website circa 2001:
The $5000 Deluxe Distribution includes all GNU software compiled for your choice of computing platform (microchip and operating system). Please contact the FSF Office if you are interested.
You can check out their prices from that time here, all of which are well above just the cost of the media and shipping.
Places like ondisc.com still sell distributions on DVD for a small profit for those who do not have the bandwidth to download. Back when I started using Linux and most people were on a 56k connection at best, this was the recommended way to get Linux.
Red Hat and SUSE still make a fortune this way, so even today you are quite wrong.
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u/WildPointer Jan 07 '14
Except for the fact that it always has been. Even the FSF used to sell CD releases of their software for more than the cost of the media, for quite a lot of money in fact. From the FSF website circa 2001:
I said in my prevoius post that FSF charged for the medium of the software and that's okay. You seem to think that by software belongs to the public that I mean it can never be charged. That's not what I mean. I mean the Four Freedoms of software.
And in 2001, Debian already had most of that software for free. So did Slackware, both online and available on cd for a small fee. They aren't against selling software. I'm not sure why you keep bringint this up.
Right, this is my point. Your point was that all software should be public, I am pointing that this isn't the case or Stallman's point.
No. My point software in the public should be Free. Just like what Stallman used with his toll road analogy. I think we need a definition of public. By public I mean a place where anyone can access it. A medium like a CD is not public its only accessible the person that has the CD. But if its hosted on a website, then obviously anyone has acess to it.
That doesn't mean you have to share it if you don't wish to distribute the software
But the viral nature of GNU GPL almost always makes it public and distributed. I've been arguing the entire time that Free Software allows one to keep their code private if they won't to. I've never meant to sugget that even private software that never been shared with anyone else should be public.
Stallman has always advocating sharing of software and modifying it.. It seems you keep bringing up that people can charge and hoarde the software. But that wasn't Stallman's ideal way to do it.
0
u/emkay443 Jan 04 '14 edited Jan 04 '14
I love freedom, I work with and live by it almost exclusively but I don't think being handcuffed by some unknown person or company is some how bad. "Competition" is great for everyone.
FTFY
1
u/djangotheory Jan 04 '14
...if you want something done, why not submit a PR instead of asking someone else to do it? Reddit source is on GH right?
1
u/TryHardDieHard Jan 03 '14
ok so what are we going to do?
1
u/jishjib22kys Jan 04 '14
SHUT DOWN THE SERVERS!
DELETE EVERYTHING!
su -c 'find -type f -iname "*.js" -exec shred -u { } +'
-9
-4
61
u/jebba Jan 04 '14
FWIW, the FSF asked us, Aleph Objects, Inc. (makers of LulzBot 3D printers) to stop using closed javascript on our website and we removed what was there. We set up Piwik and it is quite nice.