Stallman warns against non-free JavaScript code

Richard Stallman, free software activist and founder of the GNU Project, has warned the FOSS community of falling into the trap of non-free JavaScript. Addressing adherents to the free software principle, Stallman notes that while browsers such as Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera and Chrome are free and readily identifies what Stallman terms as "non-trivial" JavaScript code--banner ad comes to mind--they are silent about the "hidden" JavaScript used in web services.

Citing Google Docs as an example, he explained how the web service works. "Google Docs downloads into your machine a JavaScript program which measures half a megabyte, in a compacted form that we could call Obfuscript because it has no comments and hardly any whitespace, and the method names are one letter long."

However, this Obfuscript is hardly the preferred form of medication, and the real source code of this downloaded JavaScript is not available to the user. Indeed, current web browsers also do not support a user changing the code and running modified JavaScript.
So what is Stallman's proposed plan of action? He suggests that "non-trivial" JavaScript software be properly defined, and that browsers be allowed to detect them--and allow users to make a decision on the JavaScript code that they're likely to run.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at GNU
- check out this article at The Register

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