FSF Suggests That Google Free Gmail Javascript 413
Phoe6 writes "Apparently, FSF is calling it a 'JavaScript Trap' and wants 'useful websites' such as Gmail and others such as Twitter, Facebook to release their JavaScript code under Free Software License so that users can trust their service."
In other news.. (Score:3, Insightful)
FSF wants Windows, Office, Photoshop, and everything else to be free. That's their job. People need to be able to make money on software, or large corporations won't invest in it. That's why FOSS-friendly companies like Sun are going under and being snapped up by profit-hungry pricks like Larry Ellison. Film at 11.
Re:In other news.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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RH doesn't mind CentOS -- the people who run CentOS and stay there generally wouldn't have been paying for RH anyway; and it's an opportunity to start free, realize you actually need support (or that support is cheaper than hiring an army of IT people capable of doing it themselves), and upgrade to RedHat.
Re:In other news.. (Score:5, Insightful)
So what?
Really... so what? Red Hat is stable and exists as it does perfectly fine. This bizarre notion we have in this country that all companies must always be earning more and more every year than before and always growing and profits must be more than any other company is unsustainable. It does no good for society and is the wrong way to go about things.
Red Hat and Apple can exist at the same time regardless of size or popularity. All that matters for Red Hat is that they make enough money to support keeping it's employees working and the business around to keep offering what makes its customers happy year in and year out. Suggesting that they are somehow less valid because they are not as big as Apple or Microsoft is a non-sequitor in the context of the preceding discussion.
What is relevant to the preceding discussion is the question of whether making a living by being in the "OSS industry" can be a viable practice. The answer is clearly "yes."
Re:In other news.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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I say this as a non-american.
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growth is what stockholders want to see. So public companies want to make their shareholders happy.
We're getting off topic, but I want to engage this point anyway.
First, I'm 100% in agreement with you.
However, I see this as something of a cancerous relationship. On average, shareholders don't care an iota about what value or detriment the company brings to society, or whether the value or detriment comes now or in the future, or whether the value or detriment comes at the expense or benefit of a limited set of certain members of society. Shareholders only want to put their money in a company and get a
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Re:In other news.. (Score:4, Insightful)
For the most part, marketshare is only a meaningful metric to shareholders and a competitive mindset.
If your employees are well paid and the company is alive and well, it doesn't matter if you're first or last in market share. If your product is crap and you lose marketshare and go out of business, well the problem was the product, not the marketshare; perilously declining marketshare was only a symptom of a problem. But declining marketshare itself, like due to population growth or sprouting competition amidst the growth of an emerging market does not mean your business is dying. You could be doing better year over year and still lose marketshare.
The mentality that "if you're not growing you're dying" is nothing more than simplistic and short-sighted sloganeering.
For what it's worth, even if it were true, dying is not necessarily a bad thing if the alternative is unbridled growth for the sole benefit of shareholders and diminishing returns (or loss) to society.
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Because money is the only goal in life?
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And why redhat makes a billion a year, oh wait. FOSS had nothing to do with Sun going under. Sun was dieing long before that.
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That's profits I believe. In terms of earnings, I think it is close to a billion.
Depending on what context, it is valid to say that Red Hat "makes a billion a year". In terms of revenue, it's getting there.
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That is profit, try looking into revenue.
Comments like that really call into question whether anyone should ever believe anything you post, since you probably already knew that.
Re:In other news.. (Score:5, Informative)
FSF wants Windows, Office, Photoshop, and everything else to be free. That's their job. People need to be able to make money on software, or large corporations won't invest in it. That's why FOSS-friendly companies like Sun are going under and being snapped up by profit-hungry pricks like Larry Ellison. Film at 11.
Yes, "free" as in the concept of freedom or liberty, not software at no charge or profit.
You embarrass yourself by not understanding the distiction while speaking on the subject. Or you shame yourself by deliberatley mis-stating it.
Oh, I see you're in marketing . . .
Re:In other news.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Or maybe you're the one in marketing. It's completely obvious that the phrase "free as in freedom, not free as in beer" is a flat-out false statement. It be accurate, it should be restated as "free as in freedom, AND free as in beer". Here's what the FSF says:
"When we call software “free,” we mean that it respects the users' essential freedoms: the freedom to run it, to study and change it, and to redistribute copies with or without changes. This is a matter of freedom, not price, so think of “free speech,” not “free beer.”"
Notice the phrase "to redistribute copies" - that's "free as in beer". The FSF wants to paint is as a "freedom" issue when they're also smuggling in "free" under that banner.
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That's a nice theory, but it doesn't work in practice. There is no way to make software that can be easily bug fixed by the end user that cannot also be easily enhanced by the end user, and commercial software fundamentally relies on being able to get money from the consumer for new features.
This basically leaves support contracts as the only practical revenue stream. That works fine if you are writing software for bu
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This basically leaves support contracts as the only practical revenue stream. That works fine if you are writing software for businesses (who want someone to sue).
This seems to be working just fine for Red Hat and others. Why waste time with individual consumers who are fickle, stupid, and above all, cheap, and are going to copy everything on BitTorrent anyway? Trying to sell something that can be copied trivially on the internet is a losing proposition, unless you also provide something else that can't b
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I'd like to mention that the option you bring up here is woefully overlooked in its various forms. I've had clients bemoan the fact that they can't use an otherwise perfect piece of software in their project because the license is too restr
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Because if you depend on corporate use to sustain your business, you're going to be very disappointed unless your product is in the IT space or is something very generic like a word processor. For other products, you can't make enough money that way to cover your costs.
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I'm always looking for ways to be supportive of FSF's stances, but they are a puritan organization. As such, they present views that they know won't gain mainstream acceptance but that's ok, since something more reasonable will gain it. And that's where I stand: I don't consider words of FSF to be holy [stallman.org], but I will support a more "secular" view.
Same here. It's unreasonable to consider an offering "libre" to be truly possible without being fully "unpaid". Not beca
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Software needs funding before it exists.
Not necessarily.
Unix, Linux, the GNU Project, Apache, and gazillions of other very useful bits of software were created without specifically funding them. In most cases, the software came first, the funding later. While the early developers of each of those packages used resources that had to come from somewhere, most of those resources were scrounged and repurposed stuff. All of them operated on a "write working code now, worry about logistics and organization later" system very early on.
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I release stuff as free software. I label it as such (not as open source). At the same time, I don't expect to make a living off of that software.
I don't have software-unrelated skills. I don't want to do unskilled labor. What can I do? I can write software for living.
I want
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Except unlike you, FSF is actually making sense - of course, the apps will not get open source, but it will sensibilize the people a little more, each time they do such "PR" announce.
Eventually enough people would realize that open source is good - that's FSF's goal - and some of these apps could be built open source instead.
Now if you like open source or not is another story, of course. I'll just mention that RedHat is doing extremely well. Proprietary companies are going down every single day. Some open s
Re:In other news.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Java was not a failure. Monetizing Java was a failure. The difference is significant.
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Java is slow? Compared to what? For what kind of task? Even in the pre JIT compilation days, I thought Java wasn't so bad given what it is.
The biggest problem with Java was a culture of over-engineering that grew up around it. Anybody can write a slow program if they make it complicated enough. The incredibly rich software ecosystem of Java makes it incredibly easy to over-engineer an application by glomming together huge chunks of pre-built functionality. That's why the Java world needs something like
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Moron...
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Re:In other news.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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This is an understatement. We continually hear that "Sun was OSS friendly"; "Sun contributed more than anyone else" etc. etc. The thing was, they did put stuff out, but they almost always did it in a way that meant they didn't join the community. Their choice to put out Solaris under the CCDL was deliberately done to make it incompatible with the Linux community and the FSF. They took ages to open up Java, and a truly GPL Java only came about because of the efforts of RedHat and others on IcedTea.
The
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It would go a long ways in these conversations if people would switch to 'Libre' and 'Gratis'. "free != Free" doesn't really explain how he is wrong, libre (freedom) != gratis (no charge) at least makes the difference between the terms more obvious.
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Actually, free is a proper superset of Free. By definition, all Free software is free, but not all free software is Free. The freedom to redistribute freely ensures this. Even without that freedom, however, it would still be largely true in practice.
i guess that was a sanctioned comment (Score:2)
I was going to be all snarky about some blog post probably not being the voice of FSF, but then, http://www.gnu.org/people/speakers.html [gnu.org] and he's on there.
So I guess I disagree with the FSF, and not just him!
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Out of interest, what do you disagree with?
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If they care so much, why don't they raise money and build their own free FSFMail? They can make it as free as they want.
What's that? They can't afford to? So, basically it makes it look like FSF stands for FreeLOADER Software Foundation.
Re:i guess that was a sanctioned comment (Score:5, Insightful)
I feel like it's asking too much. The concern is, "hey gmail maybe your code triggers some js machine bugs, and we dont trust it." That's valid. But asking them to open source it for inspection, well that lets other folks pick the pieces up and start hawking their own version. Isn't there a middle ground [to ask for, and be denied]? I've just become jaded enough to start agreeing with that crappy business model "let the 10% that complain cancel their service". So long ago that seemed like a joke answer a fake company would use, but now we see it all the time. And I agree with it, alas. If you dont trust gmail, dont use it. Dont ask for their trade secrets either under the veil of security auditing and the intended benefit of legally copying it, or legitimately security auditing it and haphazardly allowing competing services to glean legal copies. Ask for some NDA access to have yourself or someone you trust inspect it. Just because something can be open sourced, doesn't mean it needs to be.
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The issue is that without the essential freedoms to study, modify and distribute copies of the software, users are at a disadvantage to the developer and that's unjust.
Before parroting boilerplate lines, could you please make an effort to understand the context of what people are talking about? Your quote is great for talking about Matlab or something; here, it makes no sense.
You can already "study" Google's Javascript code: like you said, you can look at it. You can already "modify" Google's Javascript code, just like you can modify any other Javascript code. Try it sometime: type "javascript:foo();" into your browser and watch the magic happen. Nothing is stopping you
Just like all other software (Score:3)
The FSF wants all software released under a free software license. So it really isn't news that they want Javascript software released under a free software license.
Their reason is also bullshit (Score:2)
The thing is, JavaScript is inherently source visible. Since it is a script, and it runs on the client system, you can always see the source. For trusting an app, you don't need the source to be open, as in free to redistribute. You just need it available. The US Government trusts MS software because they have the source (many people have the source to Windows, governments, universities, etc). You can audit it, compile it yourself (or interpret it yourself which is automatic in JS) and so on.
Thus there is n
JavaScript is client-side (Score:3)
Releasing the client-side code isn't a big deal (it's right there in the page source!) I'd be more interested in the server-side code.
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It is a huge deal. It is right there in the page source, and you do not have the right to do a thing with it according to the current license on that code. Giving you the four freedoms on software you are running is a huge deal and the goal of the FSF.
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With the stated reason of: "so that users can trust their service", the important part is being able to examine the source-code.
Admittedly the GWT generated JavaScript is not very reader-friendly, but it is all there for you to look at if you should choose.
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But you currently do not have the right to do that. The license google uses forbids this, I am pretty sure.
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Oh, please. I'm pretty sure a judge would side with me if Google complained that I right-clicked the page and viewed source.
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You can do at least one thing with any code you have in front of your eyes, including client side javascript, and that is examine it to see if you can "trust" it. No, you may not have the right to do anything you want with it, but that's within their rights to license the code however they wish. If you don't like how they license their code, don't use their service, find one that meets the four freedoms and live happily.
Re:JavaScript is client-side (Score:5, Insightful)
I would agree that client side code is (relatively) accessible via the programmer (even if it is compressed); however trusting their server side execution of those includes is really where the trust factor comes into play. Most browsers will lock down cross domain requests. The real power is controlling what the server serves to the users that use that include.
For example, www.xyz.com decides to include a couple lines libraries from google.com, say, jquery, and analytics. By virtue of making the include, that third party site has the ability of pass messages back and forth via code generation (to bypass the cross domain issues) and manipulate the DOM of www.xyz.com in however it sees fit. Now, a security minded person wouldn't include a resource that's off-site, for this very reason. Good examples of this are bank sites like usaa.com. No where on that site will you see a third party domain resource, once you've signed to your account. Putting the resource files on www.xyz.com makes a lot of sense for versioning, but also securing the site from potential hacks of the third party (hacking that google's analytics includes or akamai servers is a juicy opportunity, but only if you could execute code server side).
When it comes to javascript, the best way to secure your site is to host your own resources, and DON'T use off site includes that are from untrusted sources. Even if the source is trusted, it doesn't mean your in the clear. Your best bet, is to always host your own site resources.
What about WebKit? (Score:2)
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We're not talking about forcing anyone to do anything -- but JavaScript is programming code too.
The FSF's goal is for all the software a user runs on their computer to be free software -- without a license, the software would be full copyright and not in a fit state for modification. This is completely within the goals of the FSF.
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the js client can't do anything the API doesn't already provide access to. you can modify it all you want, the server doesn't trust the client any more than the user privileges allow.
Ask for the server code, damnit (Score:2)
Sorry, but this it stupid. The real brains that we'd need to trust is in the SERVER code. And all of Google's procedures. Knowing what the client is up might make some feel good, but this all very centralized.
Greasemonkey (Score:2)
The popular Greasemonkey Firefox extension (Which I believe is built-in on Google Chrome) lets the end user modify the javascript/css running on the site to the user's desires. There's a huge database on UserScripts.org that lets you browse site-specific mods to Twitter, Facebook and yes, Gmail.
Another very popular extension is "Better GMail 2", which basically packages some greasemonkey scripts into a single extension.
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You seem to have the same answer that others here do but it's a bit off. Anyone can already get the source code and use it. But it's the license that is the issue here. No one can legally place it on their site and write their own version AFAIK.
Fair enough. I want a pony! (Score:2)
And a space unicorn! And free candy!
Javascript is evil! Use GnuWebScript! (Score:2, Insightful)
You may not know it, but the website you're reading RIGHT NOW is a festering hotbed of evil. EVIL. Evil code that will steal your information, kill your wife and children, and damage the transmission on your car.
The ONLY way around that is to use our new FSF GnuWebScript, which is Totally Open and Free. Not only is it a Force for Good, it whitens your teeth and makes your toes smell nicer. It will never do those evil and nasty things that the Javascript does, because it's not Javascript - it's GnuWebScript!
Could it be... (Score:2)
That someone at the FSF has been using Gmail and started feeling guilty about using "non-free" software and instead of switching to something else is trying to get Google to change?
red herrings (Score:2)
Speaking of obfuscation, the article by the FSF drags Node.js and V8 into the discussion, even though they have nothing at all to do with the client-side javascript that the ostensible topic of the article.
Also, as the author mentions, it is possible via greasemonkey to do essentially what is wanted--modify the client-side javascript--so it seems like an ideological point rather than a practical one. The "obfuscation" of the javascript source is as much about reducing the bandwidth consumed by javascript as
who cares (Score:2)
I don't see the point (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't quite see the point. Sure it would be nice to have the Javascript under a Free Software license, but that would be very far down my list of priorities, as with Javascript and the Web in general there is one very fundamental difference to regular software: You neither own that stuff nor control it, they do and that is the problem that needs attacking. It doesn't make a difference if they stick a GPL header on top of their code or not, I as I would still be forced to use whatever version they ship me, keeping around an older copy with features they might have changed/removed/whatever doesn't help me when the API to their servers has changes, that old GPL copy might either break or become unusable. The real solution would be to provide standard data driven APIs for webservices, so that I wouldn't depend on their Javascript and HTML code, but could roll my own.
The whole problem with the Web today is that I don't have direct access to my data, but instead can only access it via a whole swoop of HTML and Javascript stuff, that makes it frequently hard or even impossible to actually do certain operation. A very basic example would be backup. Yeah, I can download mail from GMail via POP or IMAP and that will give me some of my mails, but what about chat logs, mail I send, tags, contacts, etc. and a bunch of other meta data that isn't just the mail? Can I backup all that? And even more importantly: Can I actually restore it? If GMail decides to delete my account tomorrow, can I open a new one and restore my backup into the new account? Can I do that when I change mail providers? Will meta data survive the transfer? That is the problem that needs fixing, as almost all webpages suffer from it, even the glorious 100% Free Software ones generally don't give you full import and export capabilities of your data and even when they do the interfaces are often limited and cumbersome.
Re:Yeah right (Score:4, Insightful)
You do realize that you can already debug it and step through because it's client side?
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Re:Yeah right (Score:5, Interesting)
Nothing a glorified find-and-replace can't help with. This'll help you get started:
http://unwrongest.com/how-to-decompress-javascript/ [unwrongest.com]
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Wouldn't FSF's effort be better placed making a tool that intelligently adds whitespace and allows the user to quickly and easily change variable and function names? It would still be above the typical user's level but all it would take is one white hatter de-obfuscate the code and post it somewhere. Seriously, gmail's java script isn't that big, you could probably do it with notepad and find-replace by hand in a couple hours.
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The source is obfuscated and also compressed.
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Good job having no idea what you are talking about there. Javascript runs on the browser, you get a copy every-time you visit google.
On top of which if you have source, you don't need to reverse engineer anything. Plus hiding access to source is not security, just obscurity.
Over all your entire comment was pretty much totally pointless and uninformed.
Re:Yeah right (Score:4, Informative)
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They would like browsers to support hot-swapping websites' scripts with modified copies.
Can't you do that with Greasemonkey? I wouldn't know as I've never tried it, but it's the sort of thing I'd expect you to be able to do with it from how people talk of it.
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Opera does this. I've made use of it in the past to fix buggy javascript on a site.
I'd suspect Firefox does something similar.
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With the Firebug plug-in you can change the JS (and HTML and CSS too for that matter) in the debugger and see instant results. But I don't know if it allows you to swap a complete script. I guess you accomplish that by changing a link to a script in an HTML file to point to your own. I've only ever used it to debug my own scripts or someone's I had to take ownership of.
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Can't you do this with greasemonkey (and presumably other tools) already?
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You are the only one, because you have no idea what you are talking about.
The FSF would like to see you be able to substitute sites scripts with your own modified copies only on your own browser. Oh no, you could run exploit code on yourself.
How about you register an account and come back in a few years when you have learned something.
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What I don't understand is what the hell the FSF is asking for. JavaScript runs on the client side and th
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They want the user to have the four freedoms over this code. They also want an unobfuscated copy. Right now you sure could copy the JS and modify it yourself, but you would be in violation of the license google has placed on it.
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Isn't that somewhat moot? Unless they have restored offline support in the last few weeks, Google could take away the service at any time just by shutting down their servers, and it wouldn't matter at all if you had the client-side code cached locally because it won't function with
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We cannot go around talking about how modern and awesome web apps are, then turn around and claim that the FSF has no business discussing the implications of web apps on software freedom.
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I agree that the FSF is doing exactly what they've always said they'd do, and for those stated reasons.
It's just that sometimes the FSF come across as being zealots. They're like old communists and the like talking about the ideological purity of software. The rest of us are just trying not to make contact with the crazy person.
Commercial entities aren't generally interested in the notio
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You missed the biggest part of their complaint. They want you to have the right to modify that code and have the rest of the four freedoms. They want this code under a free software license, as they want for all code.
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They just have to provide the code under a free license. Running the code is another problem entirely.
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That is not their problem, but grease-monkey already lets you do this.
This is just done in the users browser.
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You should be able too. You can always replace the code on your devices to be sure.
Most people might not care, but that does not mean anything. Most of those people would be ok without freedom of speech or freedom of thought either.
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I at least want the circuit diagrams and all images of the (E)EPROMs so I can fix the device when it breaks. It was like this in the past (circuit diagrams were in the manuals or in some magazines, at least in the USSR). I can find service manuals for some devices, but I want them included with the device and also have images of the chips that need to be programmed before they can be used.
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Most Facebook users use a browser written in C++ -- they don't know that either, yet free software browsers and rendering engines remain in common usage.
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Psst, here's a copy of Facebook's secret code -- http://static.ak.fbcdn.net/rsrc.php/v1/yp/r/Ub2OCc5xWCb.js [fbcdn.net]
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Exactly, we have the code. Why does it need to be open sourced?
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Meaning they could actually get a second opinion. Seems like that would be great. I am no doctor, but I get access to the records so I can show them to another doctor. Getting a second opinion is a valuable thing.
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Because the odds that all doctors are evil is lower than the odds that one doctor is evil. Trust is not an all or nothing thing.
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Yeah well at some point you ask a third and then a fourth and before you know it you have an overwhelming majority of experts agreeing on something. That makes you feel a whole lot better then just hearing it from one. And, you know, people might trust a doctor who also happens to be a family member or close friend more then a hospitable.
OK, enough beating on this analogy. The point is that even if I don't have the knowledge to examine the code and deem it safe I'll feel a lot better if my friend who works
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Wow, that is one really good troll.
They already give you a copy of this code numbnuts, the FSF just wants them to change the license on it. Confiscation is done against your will. the FSF does not have the force of law they just are asking.
The FSF is never demeaned when they try to have software come under a free software license, that is their goal at all times.
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Well I see your point but I disagree. It's not confiscation because Google would still own the copyright and this would be their choice to open source it.
I think the FSF approach is this - imagine a world where instead of hiding information and ideas, which is what source code is, we share those ideas and move forward so much faster. It's not in the name of security you see, it's in the name of freedom and moving humanity forward that much faster. You don't have to agree with it. It's idealistic, but some o
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You think the FSF should prefix all of its opinions on its own website?