Re: Savannah vs. Gitlab

[Maxthon Chan]

> On Dec 9, 2015, at 15:34, H. Nikolaus Schaller <hns@goldelico.com> wrote:
> snip
> 
>> 
>>> I learned ~1 year ago that there is an FSF initiative (license? I don't
>>> know the
>>> right word) that all software running on a web server must also be open
>>> source
>>> to be considered "free speech".
>> 
>> It may, but it is not your primary concern: you are just a user.
>> The bigger concern is what is running on your web client (i.e. in your
>> own browser).
> 
> Java Script is open source by principle.
> 
> Java bytecode isn't. But AFAIK GitHub doesn't use it.
> 
>> 
>> For this reason I use and recommend LibreJS:
>> https://www.gnu.org/software/librejs/
> 
> I have read that plus
> 
> http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html
> 
> but I am not sure if that is the right approach. It tries to waste network 
> bandwidth
> for license code embedded into the JS code which carries exactly 1 bit of 
> information.
> 
> I don't see a problem in instructing my browser:
> 
> if (url = "github/something.js)
>       replace-with(my-modified-copy/something.js)
> 
> Would be less than 20 lines of code in SWK. Or a little more to have regular 
> expressions.
> 
> Then I am free to modify the file for my purposes. And GitHub can't prevent 
> me to do so.
> So they can't stop my freedom. Unless they enforce copyright on the JS they 
> send. But
> how should they do except banning me from using their service?
> 
> Well, they can ban me from distributing the modified version. But why should 
> I do that?
> I don't see a reason that I as a GitHub user should "improve" their system. I 
> just want
> to use it for GNUstep hosting.
> 
> Therefore I think it is NOT the author of the JS at GitHub who restricts 
> freedom. It is the
> browser that does not provide such capabilities. The evil is not GitHub but 
> the browser
> developer... And banning GitHub for that reason is IMHO the wrong conclusion.

This is exactly what I mean by “LibreJS is becoming its own antithesis”. Given 
the nature of JS files they have to be open source or they won’t work at all. 
About the “free as in freedom” part there is nothing preventing you from 
creating a mod_rewrite for your own browser and rewrite URLs of “non-free” JS 
files into free reimplementations (or black holes) and original authors of such 
JS files would have zero control about the end user cherry-picking their JS 
files.

And from my searches it struck me that LibreJS is doing more damage than good, 
forcing open source Web projects like Reddit (their Web application is fully 
open source) to fork each and every JS library they use just to add a LibreJS 
marking. This could have been avoided if LibreJS have taken a different 
approach.

> 
> BR,
> Nikolaus
> 
> 
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