
No one should have to use proprietary software to talk to their government - ashitlerferad
http://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/no-one-should-have-to-use-proprietary-software-to-communicate-with-government
======
mbrock
From the free software perspective, it's like the government is saying "in
order to submit a comment to us, please download this obfuscated Turing
complete software and run it on your computer."

That this particular source code is JavaScript on a web page means that it
obeys under some more or less correctly implemented sandbox, but you're still
obliged to execute minified and unlicensed code.

The FSF views that as unethical. You shouldn't need to load proprietary
software onto your computer to communicate with the government.

It's a principled stance that applies even where the current situation is not
abusive, so it can seem like exaggeration or even "craziness."

Their comment itself clearly explains their stance.

[https://www.fsf.org/licensing/2016-tech-comment-copyright-
of...](https://www.fsf.org/licensing/2016-tech-comment-copyright-office)

~~~
fixermark
I assume they're okay with the software on the copyright office's servers
being proprietary and closed-source, as well as the software in the word
processors and email servers and clients they'll use to banter the topic back
and forth internally, right?

It's just the fact that they can't HTTP POST their message to a server using
open protocols that sticks in their craw?

I'm curious where they draw the line at coming to terms with the mechanical
necessities of interacting with the government to represent their
constituency's interests.

~~~
mbrock
I'm not deeply familiar with the exact philosophy of the FSF, but I would
guess:

(1) software freedom is mostly about protecting the rights of you as a user of
software, and if the government uses proprietary software on their own end to
make decisions based on secret rules or whatever then that's basically their
business; but on the other hand

(2) there are strong arguments for making the decision making technology of
government into free software since government is for and by the people who
should have the right to understand the technology that governs them.

So, in a way they do just want to be able to keep their own computers free
from proprietary/secret binary blobs; on the other hand, advocating for
government transparency goes hand in hand with advocating for software freedom
(thus FSF and EFF are allies).

------
daveloyall
The LibreJS browser add-on blocks javascript that is above a certain
size/complexity and doesn't have a programatically declared (or manually
whitelisted) FOSS license.

The FSF uses LibreJS on the computers in their office. Which makes it
_excruciating_ to buy airline tickets, for example.

I was flabbergasted when I found this out. I thought something along the lines
of "I've been giving these mad martyrs money!?". :)

...It took a while to sink in, but... They are right.

The reasoning goes like this:

A script embedded in a website is a tiny program that runs on your computer.
It is software.

Some software is morally wrong. Some software is morally neutral or good.
Software can/has/will change the world, and it's important that it be a force
of good, not evil.

You can tell the difference between good and bad software by applying the
following metrics. The software is "free" (as in William Wallace) if it
provides the user with the following freedoms:

    
    
        * The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any
          purpose (freedom 0).
        * The freedom to study how the program works, and change
          it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1).
          Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
        * The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your
          neighbor (freedom 2).
        * The freedom to distribute copies of your modified
          versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can
          give the whole community a chance to benefit from your
          changes. Access to the source code is a precondition
          for this.
    

The javascript on government websites (even non-USA) should have those
freedoms. Why not?

Another comment here said that the FSF needs to "pick its battles". Actually,
don't you think this is a great one to pick? There's no good excuse for a
government web-dev to avoid meeting those requirements. And there's no good
argument against users demanding them. It's _just javascript_!

[Edit: wrap "excruciating" in * instead of ".]

~~~
mjevans
How about making it possible to communicate with government offices without
JavaScript/ECMAScript at /all/?

What if it worked properly for those with ADA abilities, like say the blind on
a text mode TTY with a text-only browser? Those still support basic web forms
and the server side is where all data-validation should occur anyway.

Alternatively, as the EFF notes, allowing alternate communications protocols
(such as the freely open standard of _shudder_ email) is also a viable
secondary channel.

~~~
yxhuvud
Isn't it their websites that are the alternative protocol? The primary would
be snail mail.

------
Bartweiss
As usual with FSF stuff, I don't actually _disagree_ , but it blows my mind
that they actually care this much. I can't imagine being unwilling to submit a
request (that furthers the cause of free software) because it requires going
through a proprietary portal.

~~~
brbsix
Their actions seem to be consistent with their principles. I'd be far more
surprised if they were willing to sacrifice them out of pragmatism. Rather,
perhaps the advice they need is "choose your battles".

~~~
sethish
The anti-proprietary-js movement seems to be coming from RMS himself (given
his complaints to con organizers). And he hasn't used a browser other than
emacs in... ever?

~~~
davexunit
RMS uses the GNU IceCat fork of Firefox sometimes.

------
Overtonwindow
Have you seen our tax code lately, or the Internal Revenue Service? Forget
proprietary software. Try proprietary documents, forms, and methods of
submission!

~~~
throwaway2016a
I was going to say that... I love it when a Government site makes me download
a MS Word or Excel file. So I need to either buy a Microsoft product or trust
OSS solutions that often mangle the document (through no fault of their own...
reverse engineering a proprietary file format is difficult and displaying it
the exact same is even harder).

~~~
matthewrhoden1
While you can't edit, you can view for free:

[https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/download/details.aspx?id=4](https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/download/details.aspx?id=4) [https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/download/details.aspx?id=10](https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/download/details.aspx?id=10)

~~~
throwaway2016a
It's good to know that exists.

For what it's worth, I have a Mac so those won't work. I don't have the time
right now to search microsoft.com for a Mac version so I reserve judgment
until then :)

~~~
rz2k
Microsoft provides Windows images you can run in VirtualBox if you want to try
it out.

[https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-
edge/tools/v...](https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-
edge/tools/vms/mac/)

------
KKKKkkkk1
A more egregious example is FinCen Form 114. This is a form that you must file
with the Department of Treasury every year if you have a bank account abroad.
This form is implemented as a JavaScripty PDF thingy that only works on
Acrobat Reader on Windows (and maybe Mac) but not on Linux. The penalties for
not filing this form are max($100K, 50% of your account balance), so you don't
have much of a choice.

------
dTal
>The Copyright Office is the only agency we have dealt with that refuses to
offer any method of submission that doesn't require proprietary software.

I'm not sure whether that's ironic or expected.

------
MichaelBurge
I wonder if the FSF should start their own religion. It would be easier to
argue that the government should allow receiving comments by letter if not
allowing them goes against their moral code. I don't think it would be
stretching the definition of a religion, either.

~~~
Torgo
They already have the Church of Emacs, and Richard Stallman is deemed Saint
IGNUcius.

------
gohrt
It's interesting that when it comes to FOIA, the government will deliver
documents in the most inconvenient way possible, but when soliciting input
from the public, they only accept documents in whatever way is convenient for
them.

------
jbob2000
Wtf? Am I missing something here? People have problems with running propriety
_javascript_?

I don't get it. You don't have to install anything and if you're concerned
about what _could_ be in the javascript, then use incognito mode, tor, a
proxy, etc.

You're going to increase the cost of web software products exponentially if
devs can't use propriety javascript.

~~~
mbrock
"You're going to increase the cost of web software products exponentially if
devs can't use propriety javascript."

Why?

~~~
0x6c6f6c
Something something minified.

Minifying the Javascript files admittedly reduces the bandwidth of a server,
however providing source code for compiled/minified code can still be handled
_separately_ , and remove the argument of bandwidth since a small fraction of
users care to look at the source itself.

~~~
jbob2000
The issue isn't minification, the issue is that the code is proprietary, i.e
not written by the developer serving you the webpage.

Minification is easy to get around - copy & paste into IDE and autoformat.
Anyone who cares enough about the source code knows that they can do this.

------
mordae
No one should have to use proprietary software. Period.

~~~
fixermark
And yet almost everyone is willing to vote using e-voting machines and either
drive to that voting location with a car that has an onboard computer or take
some form of mass-transit with a location GPS and money transaction system...

~~~
pjc50
Pragmatic acceptance of the world as it is does not imply that you agree with
it being that way. A lot of people sat at the back of the bus before Rosa
Parks.

I have a very strong aversion to evoting systems and will campaign against
their introduction.

------
mark_l_watson
I have been an FSF supporter for decades, but the JavaScript issue is one
thing I don't totally agree with.

That said, there should be nothing "fancy" on government web sites, and they
should be compatible,with all operating systems and common web browsers.

------
darkstar999
Does the following solution solve the FSF's problems with "proprietary
javascript" (which just seems to mean that it has been minified)? Allow the
browser to request un-minified javascript, at the cost of a larger payload.

~~~
slrz
I think a (machine-readable) reference to the unobfuscated version is all
that's needed.

------
mankash666
What a JOKE! There's NO control on how and where the government chooses to
store your data, even if the javascript is GPL-ed. So, what gives?

I had to double check if this was a buzzfeed clickbait or real FSF article.
Travesty!

------
underbluewaters
I don't understand what they are objecting to here. What is "Proprietary
JavaScript"? JavaScript is a part of the web, arguably the least proprietary
technology platform in existence.

~~~
privong
> What is "Proprietary JavaScript"? JavaScript is a part of the web, arguably
> the least proprietary technology platform in existence.

They're not arguing the language is proprietary, they're taking issue that the
code embedded in websites is often under a proprietary license. See
[https://fsf.org/campaigns/freejs](https://fsf.org/campaigns/freejs)

~~~
kefka
They say it right at the top of the document:

> Proprietary JavaScript is a threat to all users on the Web. When minified,
> the code can hide all sorts of nasty items, like spyware and other security
> risks.

Minification is the big baddie here, as it can hide all sorts of stuff. We all
joke about spaghetti code and badly named variables. What happens with
minification is that variables are a, b, c, d, e, .... and functions are
truncated the same way.

It'd be the equivalent of using an open-source system (like busybox), making
modifications to it, and then including it on hardware. Then to comply with
the license, you provide a hodgepodge of source files in non-standard ways,
that might make the environment they provided.

~~~
fixermark
One practical key difference though is that the compute environment for the
JavaScript is already built under an assumption that none of the software it's
running can be trusted.

So practically speaking, malicious JavaScript could, perhaps, exploit
weaknesses in your sandbox but it can't save files the browser doesn't allow,
read state the browser doesn't allow, make network connections the browser or
the hosting machine's network configuration don't allow, etc., etc., etc.

It's... An odd hill to choose to die on.

------
skimmas
What about java software running in the browser with unsecure certificates and
full access to the system harddrive? because that's what we have in Portugal
to fill taxes.

------
hashkb
Wolf again?

~~~
crpatino
The irony being that every damned time the boy cried wolf in the past, there
was indeed a damned wolf stalking nearby, but the idiot villangers refused to
acknolwledge that, and then they wonder where their damned sheep might be.

Maybe we should rename the story as The girl that cried wolf instead... a girl
that goes by the name of Cassandra.

------
mshaler
"Should." Huh.

------
gtirloni
Somehow I thought this was from the EFF and my immediate reaction was that
they were going crazy. Then I realized it was the FSF instead and it all made
sense. Closed tab.

------
awinter-py
I wish these guys worked on sounding less crazy. I agree with their point
here: software does stuff we don't like and dot-gov has a responsibility to
review third-party code. Linking that to an 'all software must be FOSS'
argument starts to get nutty.

I make money by selling software. Does that make me a pariah to the FSF? I've
never been sure. I still want to donate money to preserve their unique voice,
so maybe the answer is that you have to be a little crazy to do their job.

~~~
schoen
> I make money by selling software. Does that make me a pariah to the FSF?
> I've never been sure.

FSF encourages people to make money by selling software, but their view is
that it is unethical to arrange for a user of software not to enjoy the four
freedoms with respect to that software.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Free_Software_Definition#T...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Free_Software_Definition#The_definition_and_the_Four_Freedoms)

If you've arranged for users of your software not to have those four freedoms,
FSF finds what you do objectionable and wants you to stop doing it (I don't
think "pariah" would be fair).

~~~
krapp
In other words, you can sell software as long as your license allows the user
to make as many copies as they like, and give them away for free if they want.
I can understand why so many people consider free software to be anti-
capitalist in principle.

~~~
dmm
The 13th amendment to the US constitution outlawed slavery, the buying,
selling, and ownership of human beings. Is that anti-capitalist?

~~~
EliRivers
I suppose it is, yes. Capitalism is the private ownership of the means of
production, and given that people can make things, outlawing the ownership of
people is anti-capitalist.

~~~
dmm
In that case it must sometimes be necessary to accept anti-capitalist things
to preserve important freedoms.

~~~
Nevermark
Capitalism means free enterprise. People are agents who can sell their
services or property or not as they see fit. Unless someone agreed to sell
themselves into slavery, slavery is not capitalist.

Capitalism doesn't mean money rules, although abuse of a capitalist system
often involves money being used to corrupt capitalism. Paying politicians,
judges, controlling the media, and other forms of corruption or fraud are
often labeled "Capitalist" by anti-capitalists, but those things are not
capitalist but abuses.

An example of a genuine critique of capitalism (or the limits of it), is to
point out that each of us has benefited from our governments social investment
in us, such as education, and we should therefore all contribute to educating
the next generation. This is not a capitalist arrangement in the sense that
individuals are being both given education and required to pay for the next
generation without express agreement with each individual.

But recognizing the usefulness of some non-capitalist arrangements is not the
same as being anti-capitalist. Most people who say they want capitalism to
overrule all other concerns are actually people who want their money to
overrule other concerns and are deceptively using the name "capitalism" to
hide their parasitic agenda.

