Jaffar Rumith to rms show details 2008-03-19 Reply Hello RMS, 0) During one of your lectures in Moscow you were asked a question whether there can be rules defining free hardware just like there are rules defining free software. IIRC, you answered that since we the users do not possess the means and skills to design and produce hardware on our own, such a concept currently is non-applicable. I'd like to point out that a user is not necessarily an individual: a user can be a corporation like Sun Microsystems or VIA, which obviously can design and mass-produce hardware. The lion's share of users cannot modify their hardware, however the lion's share of users cannot modify their software as well. Am I missing something? II think I will not be exaggerating if I say that there are thousands of chip-making companies, although most of them do little to no design work, since it is a very expensive and complex task. Could introduction of "Hardware GPL" invite them to cooperate and, possibly, bring improvements to the current state of affairs? Example Suppose there is a company Foo, Inc shipping product Bar. Foo has spent lots of money to design hardware restricting users of Bar in some way, but uses free software to cut its development costs. There is a certain market for systems similar to Foo Bar that do not restrict their users; however, the initial investment in designing the hardware is pretty high for most smaller manufacturers to afford. If there is a way to cut their costs further by providing them with a large pool of chip designs that suit or nearly suit their requirements, several important achievements would be possible: a) If it is made sure (e.g. using a license term) that no chips crippling users [providing DRM or whatever] enter that pool, then producing restrictive hardware will be significantly more expensive than using available designs and building non-restrictive hardware. b) No single manufacturer would be able obtain a dominant market position and thus, would be unable to abuse it. Again, am I missing something? 1) Do you consider web applications not utilizing the Aferro GPL or a similar license non-free software? Thanks, -Jaffar Rumith Reply Forward Richard M. Stallman - Autoreply Message to me show details 2008-03-19 Reply [This message was generated by an automated system.] I am not on vacation, but I am at the end of a long time delay. I am located somewhere on Earth, but as far as responding to email is concerned, I appear to be well outside the solar system. After your message arrives at gnu.org, I will collect it in my next batch of incoming mail, some time within the following 24 hours. I will spend much of the following day reading that batch of mail and will come across your message at some point. If I can write a response for it immediately, the response will go out in the next outgoing batch--typically around 24 hours after I collected your message, but occasionally sooner or later than that. As a result, you should expect a minimum delay of between 24 and 48 hours in seeing any response to your mail to me. If you are having a conversation with me, please keep in mind that each message you receive from me is probably a response to the mail you sent 24 to 48 hours earlier, and any subsequent mail you sent has not yet been seen by me. If you are in a hurry to speak with me, try sending mail to saying what you would like to talk with me about, and giving your telephone number. Another option to reach me urgently is to call the Free Software Foundation office at 617-542-5942 and ask them to contact me on your behalf. If you aren't in an immediate hurry, there is no need to contact rms-assist@gnu.org or the Free Software Foundation office. I will get back to you as soon as I possibly can. If you do not wish to receive this message ever again, please send a message to rms-autoreply-control@gnu.org with the subject "OFF". Otherwise, you might receive a reply like this one up to once a month. Reply Forward Richard Stallman to me show details 2008-03-20 Reply 0) During one of your lectures in Moscow you were asked a question whether there can be rules defining free hardware just like there are rules defining free software. IIRC, you answered that since we the users do not possess the means and skills to design and produce hardware on our own, such a concept currently is non-applicable. I'd like to point out that a user is not necessarily an individual: a user can be a corporation like Sun Microsystems or VIA, which obviously can design and mass-produce hardware. That is true. But if the issue applies only to companies, it is not such an important issue. 1) Do you consider web applications not utilizing the Aferro GPL or a similar license non-free software? They are free software. Remember, there are free programs that use licenses such as the X11 license and the two BSD licenses. Reply Forward Jaffar Rumith to rms show details 2008-03-20 Reply Do you consider web applications not utilizing the Aferro GPL or a similar license non-free software? They are free software. Why? For example, one of the finest search engines around can neither be redistributed nor modified, its source code is unavailable and thus creating derivative works is impossible. In addition, its license imposes certain restrictions on using it. So actually none of the essential freedoms are satisfied. Meanwhile, it is mostly built on free software [Apache, MySQL, Python, etc.]. Please clarify. -- -dp Reply Forward Richard Stallman to me show details 2008-03-21 Reply Please see http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html for the definition of free software. It may not be what you think. Reply Forward Jaffar Rumith to rms show details 2008-03-21 Reply Actually, my thoughts are based on these excerpts from the free software definition: a) "In order for the freedoms to make changes, and to publish improved versions, to be meaningful, you must have access to the source code of the program. Therefore, accessibility of source code is a necessary condition for free software." The said search engine's source code is unavailable. b) "The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0)." There are certain restrictions on using it: http://www.google.com/accounts/TOS While the first point can be negated by the fact that they do not distribute their software and only use it internally, the second point actually violates a fundamental software freedom, does it not? Reply Forward Richard Stallman to me show details 2008-03-22 Reply a) "In order for the freedoms to make changes, and to publish improved versions, to be meaningful, you must have access to the source code of the program. Therefore, accessibility of source code is a necessary condition for free software." The said search engine's source code is unavailable. You are not running it; you don't have a copy of it. Google is running that program. There are certain restrictions on using it: http://www.google.com/accounts/TOS I occasionally use the Google search engine, and I have never seen it ask me to agree to any sort of terms. I do not have, and do not want, an account. I will send mail to see what that page says. Reply Forward Jaffar Rumith to rms show details 2008-03-22 Reply I occasionally use the Google search engine, and I have never seen it ask me to agree to any sort of terms. I do not have, and do not want, an account. Google's terms of service are applicable even if you don't have an account, and it doesn't exactly have to ask you to agree to something. Quoting the relevant part of Google's ToS: 2.2 You can accept the Terms by: ... (B) by actually using the Services. In this case, you understand and agree that Google will treat your use of the Services as acceptance of the Terms from that point onwards. The said search engine's source code is unavailable. You are not running it; you don't have a copy of it. Google is running that program. Nearly, but not quite so. Google's numerous web applications (search engine included) rely on browser scripting; these scripts are executed on user's computer, in user's browser. Yet we encounter the following statement in their terms: 10.2 You may not (and you may not permit anyone else to) copy, modify, create a derivative work of, reverse engineer, decompile or otherwise attempt to extract the source code of the Software or any part thereof, unless this is expressly permitted or required by law, or unless you have been specifically told that you may do so by Google, in writing. So even if Google's server-side applications are to be considered free software, their Javascript clients that are downloaded and executed in user's browser are by definition proprietary. Besides, we cannot even legally replicate Google's efforts and release a free software version of Google's clients to legally access their server-side applications: 5.3 You agree not to access (or attempt to access) any of the Services by any means other than through the interface that is provided by Google, unless you have been specifically allowed to do so in a separate agreement with Google. 5.5 Unless you have been specifically permitted to do so in a separate agreement with Google, you agree that you will not reproduce, duplicate, copy, sell, trade or resell the Services for any purpose. Do web applications (Google's in particular) qualify for free software despite all of this? -- -dp Reply Forward Richard Stallman to me show details 2008-03-23 Reply 2.2 You can accept the Terms by: ... (B) by actually using the Services. In this case, you understand and agree that Google will treat your use of the Services as acceptance of the Terms from that point onwards. I doubt it is legally valid to make that presumption. 10.2 You may not (and you may not permit anyone else to) copy, modify, create a derivative work of, reverse engineer, decompile or otherwise attempt to extract the source code of the Software or any part thereof, unless this is expressly permitted or required by law, or unless you have been specifically told that you may do so by Google, in writing. I strongly doubt that they can legally impose this condition. I think all they have to go on is copyright law. However, these browser scripts, if non-trivial, are a real issue because they are non-free software running in your machine. Can you show me the browser script that is used for the Google search engine? I just tried visiting google.com in Firefox after turning off Javascript and Java. The page looked normal. Reply Forward Jaffar Rumith to rms show details 2008-03-23 Reply Can you show me the browser script that is used for the Google search engine? I just tried visiting google.com in Firefox after turning off Javascript and Java. The page looked normal. The script used on google.com handles activation of the services menu ("More" link; formatting preserved): window.google = {kEI:"sgzmR-vrIpaAnQOeoOzJCA",kEXPI:"17259,17735,18065",kHL:"en"}; function sf(){document.f.q.focus()} window.rwt = function(b,d,e,g,h,f,i){var a=encodeURIComponent||escape,c=b.href.split("#");b.href="/url?sa=t"+(d?"&oi="+a(d):"")+(e?"&cad="+a(e):"")+"&ct="+a(g)+"&cd="+a(h)+"&url="+a(c[0]).replace(/\+/g,"%2B")+"&ei=sgzmR-vrIpaAnQOeoOzJCA"+(f?"&usg="+f:"")+i+(c[1]?"#"+c[1]:"");b.onmousedown="";return true}; window.gbar = {};(function(){var a=window.gbar,b,g,h;function l(c,f,e){c.display=h?"none":"block";c.left=f+"px";c.top=e+"px"}a.tg=function(c){var f=0,e=0,d,m=0,n,j=window.navExtra,k,i=document;g=g||i.getElementById("gbar").getElementsByTagName("span");(c||window.event).cancelBubble=!m;if(!b){b=i.createElement(Array.every||window.createPopup?"iframe":"DIV");b.frameBorder="0";b.scrolling="no";b.src="#";g[7].parentNode.appendChild(b).id="gbi";if(j&&g[7])for(n in j){k=i.createElement("span");k.appendChild(j[n]);g[7].parentNode.insertBefore(k,g[7]).className="gb2"}i.onclick=a.close}while(d=g[++m]){if(e){l(d.style,e+1,f+25);f+=d.firstChild.tagName=="DIV"?9:20}if(d.className=="gb3"){do e+=d.offsetLeft;while(d=d.offsetParent)}}b.style.height=f+"px";l(b.style,e,24);h=!h};a.close=function(c){h&&a.tg(c)}})(); Many of the other popular services by Google (Maps, GMail, Docs, Books etc) require Javascript support to be enabled to run their standard versions, as there are tons of code being executed during normal operation. -- -dp Reply Forward Richard Stallman to me show details 2008-03-24 Reply The script used on google.com handles activation of the services menu ("More" link; formatting preserved): This one seems rather trivial. Can you understand it? I do not know Javascript. Many of the other popular services by Google (Maps, GMail, Docs, Books etc) require Javascript support to be enabled to run their standard versions, as there are tons of code being executed during normal operation. Some of those are real problems. I'm sure that Google Docs is bad. How big is the program used by GMail? Reply Forward Jaffar Rumith to rms show details 2008-03-24 Reply This one seems rather trivial. Can you understand it? I do not know Javascript. Apart from the lack of proper formatting and terrible variable names, that script isn't very hard to understand. Properly written JS shouldn't look like this: almost all modern web servers and clients support gzip compression, so poorly readable code like this gives little to no advantage in bandwidth consumption. How big is the program used by GMail? The JS source file that I have extracted is 668Kb. I should warn, however, that it is virtually unreadable and appears to be deliberately obfuscated: it starts with var JS_MODE='OPTIMIZED', JS_OBFUSCATED=1, and there is a distinct lack of formatting and descriptive names for most of its variables and functions, just like in the simple script of google.com we have already discussed. There are also smaller portions of code spread throughout the web app, less than 124Kb in total, similarly obfuscated. -- -dp Reply Forward Richard Stallman to me show details 2008-03-24 Reply The JS source file that I have extracted is 668Kb. This is definitely a problem. I will start thinking about what we should say about it. What does JS_OBFUSCATED=1 do? Reply Forward Jaffar Rumith to rms show details 2008-03-24 Reply What does JS_OBFUSCATED=1 do? JS_OBFUSCATED is not a special Javascript option or whatever, to the best of my knowledge. However, its name indicates that the code is deliberately obfuscated to prevent others from studying it - not just squashed up to save bandwidth. -- -dp Reply Forward Richard Stallman to me show details 2008-03-24 Reply JS_OBFUSCATED is not a special Javascript option or whatever, to the best of my knowledge. However, its name indicates that the code is deliberately obfuscated to prevent others from studying it - not just squashed up to save bandwidth. I suspect you are right. However, I've been informed that it is possible to use Gmail with Javascript turned off, and to use it thru IMAP. Do you have any ideas for how to define a distinction between trivial Javascript from nontrivial? I think that a program that sets up a menu (as we saw in google.com) is not a bad thing, and that we should not criticize a site for that. On the other hand, the 600k program for Gmail is clearly bad. But is there any way to define the criteria except for mere size? Reply Forward Jaffar Rumith to rms show details 2008-03-25 Reply However, I've been informed that it is possible to use Gmail with Javascript turned off, and to use it thru IMAP. The Javascript version and the plain HTML version of Gmail technically are two different clients. The fact that they talk to the same back-ends and that the user interfaces they provide have the same look and feel is irrelevant to whether both of them can be considered free software or not. I think that the fact that Gmail supports IMAP is also irrelevant. A proprietary program may use an open format like ODF, but it will still be proprietary. Similarly, Gmail servers may support IMAP and POP3 protocols, but the Javascript client is proprietary. On the other hand, the 600k program for Gmail is clearly bad. The size and complexity of the JS application itself poses little problem - it is inevitable that web apps that intensively use page reflowing and asynchronous data retrieval will contain lots of browser scripting. Since the modern trend in web development is exactly that, and broadband is becoming increasingly common, I expect that such large browser scripts will be perfectly normal some day. The real issues here are code obfuscation and restrictive licensing, I think we should concentrate on defining "obfuscated code" (since finding license restrictions isn't hard to do). -- -dp Reply Forward Richard Stallman to me show details 2008-03-26 Reply The Javascript version and the plain HTML version of Gmail technically are two different clients. The fact that they talk to the same back-ends and that the user interfaces they provide have the same look and feel is irrelevant to whether both of them can be considered free software or not. That is true. However, it does mean that Gmail as such need not be boycotted, only the non-free Javascript program which is one way to use it. Reply Forward Jaffar Rumith to rms show details 2008-03-26 Reply However, it does mean that Gmail as such need not be boycotted, only the non-free Javascript program which is one way to use it. Exactly. Will there be a formal statement (or an article) regarding this matter? -- -dp Reply Forward Richard Stallman to me show details 2008-03-27 Reply Exactly. Will there be a formal statement (or an article) regarding this matter? I have not yet thought about how to raise this issue.