[GNU-linux-libre] Browser plugins

[Sam Geeraerts]

It's been reported [1] that Konqueror suggests downloading non-free 
plugins. Even though there's some "flashplugininstaller" Kubuntu code in 
gNewSense, I suspected that the browser is actually just relaying 
information from the website. This has been confirmed by KDE developers 
[2] (thanks, Leo). This means that it's probably not a problem specific 
to Konqueror, but that all browsers could be affected.

There are several ways we can deal with this:

a) We do nothing. It's the website author who steers the user to 
non-free software, not the software. The author is free to suggest 
non-free software. We treat it like a "best viewed with Internet 
Explorer" message on the website. Strictly technically speaking the 
software is FSDG compliant.

b) We cut out the browser code that suggests plugins. From the user's 
perspective, the message comes from the browser, not from the website. 
This would also block any steering to free plugins, but I have yet to 
see a website that does that. This is the easiest/quickest fix and 
already implemented in IceCat if I'm not mistaken.

c) We keep a blacklist of known non-free URLs and replace them with 
links to free alternatives in the dialog box. While there are probably 
not many different URLs used in the wild, we're never sure to catch them 
all. We'd also have to keep track of the freedom status of the 
alternatives upstream besides all the packages in the distro. There may 
not even be something FSDG compliant to point to (which is preferably 
also easily installable by the user).

d) We use the dialog box (or e.g. integration with Software Center) to 
suggest a package from the distro to install for each media type.

I think (a) is just a poor excuse. (c) seems high cost, low gain to me. 
A "first (b), then (d) if possible" implementation looks like the best 
solution to me.

Some other thoughts:
- How do we put this on the NONFSDG list (same problem, (potentially) 
multiple browsers)?
- What do we expect from upstream, i.e. the browser developers?
- Do any free CMS/wiki packages generate code with URLs to non-free plugins?

Regards,
Sam Geeraerts
gNewSense dev

[1] http://libreplanet.org/wiki/NONFSDG#konqueror
[2] https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=273574