melpa.org doesn't work without nonfree software

melpa.org doesn't work without nonfree software

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

There is a big ethical problem with site melpa.org.  It does not work
at all unless the user executes Javascript code.  Several pages of it.
It does not seem to carry free software licenses.

I determined this by trying to access it with IceCat.  It blocked lots
of Javascript.  Even the most basic navigation does not work.

I hope that we can get this fixed.  John Wiegley, would you like to
talk with them about it?

However, for the moment, please do not post anything here referring
people to melpa.org.  Is there anything in the Emacs sources
mentioning melpa.org?

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html.

Re: melpa.org doesn't work without nonfree software

[Clément Pit--Claudel]

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On 04/01/2016 11:35 PM, Richard Stallman wrote:
> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
> 
> There is a big ethical problem with site melpa.org.  It does not work
> at all unless the user executes Javascript code.  Several pages of it.
> It does not seem to carry free software licenses.

All the code it runs is MIT or GPL licensed, it seems.


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Re: melpa.org doesn't work without nonfree software

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>
> Date: Fri, 01 Apr 2016 17:35:10 -0400
> 
> Is there anything in the Emacs sources mentioning melpa.org?

It's mentioned in the FAQ.

Re: melpa.org doesn't work without nonfree software

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > All the code it runs is MIT or GPL licensed, it seems.

"MIT licensed" is an ambiguous term, which we should avoid: see
http://gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html.  But you must mean
it carries some lax, permissive free license.

If all the code is in fact free, the proble could be fixed by putting
the appropriate license notices on the JS files (plus source pointers,
in any minified files).

But it does need to be actually fixed, before we can refer to it.  If
a page uses Javascript that LibreJS can't recognize as free, and if
that Javascript is _necessary_ for the page to serve its purpose,
we can't link to it.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html.

Re: melpa.org doesn't work without nonfree software

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > > Is there anything in the Emacs sources mentioning melpa.org?

  > It's mentioned in the FAQ.

Would you please delete it, for now?  We should not recommend
sites that are useless when visited with LibreJS.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html.

Re: melpa.org doesn't work without nonfree software

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>
> CC: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Sat, 02 Apr 2016 15:02:40 -0400
> 
>   > > Is there anything in the Emacs sources mentioning melpa.org?
> 
>   > It's mentioned in the FAQ.
> 
> Would you please delete it, for now?  We should not recommend
> sites that are useless when visited with LibreJS.

Don't you want to wait for their response first?

Re: melpa.org doesn't work without nonfree software

[John Wiegley]

>>>>> Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> I hope that we can get this fixed. John Wiegley, would you like to talk with
> them about it?

Sure, I'll talk with the MELPA maintainers.

-- 
John Wiegley                  GPG fingerprint = 4710 CF98 AF9B 327B B80F
http://newartisans.com                          60E1 46C4 BD1A 7AC1 4BA2

Re: melpa.org doesn't work without nonfree software

[Vibhav Pant]

The source for Melpa's website is available here, and is licensed
under the GPL v3: https://github.com/melpa/melpa/tree/master/html


On Sun, Apr 3, 2016 at 3:25 AM, John Wiegley <jwiegley@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>> Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:
>
>> I hope that we can get this fixed. John Wiegley, would you like to talk with
>> them about it?
>
> Sure, I'll talk with the MELPA maintainers.
>
> --
> John Wiegley                  GPG fingerprint = 4710 CF98 AF9B 327B B80F
> http://newartisans.com                          60E1 46C4 BD1A 7AC1 4BA2
>



-- 
Vibhav Pant
vibhavp@gmail.com

Re: melpa.org doesn't work without nonfree software

[Clément Pit--Claudel]

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On 04/03/2016 08:05 AM, Vibhav Pant wrote:
> The source for Melpa's website is available here, and is licensed
> under the GPL v3: https://github.com/melpa/melpa/tree/master/html

Yes, I pointed this out already I think Richard's concern is that the code doesn't carry the right tags, so it cannot be properly identified by LibreJS, a plugin that filters out nonfree code, and free code that hasn't been labeled as such. Without that code, the MELPA website is pretty unusable.


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Re: melpa.org doesn't work without nonfree software

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > >   > > Is there anything in the Emacs sources mentioning melpa.org?
  > > 
  > >   > It's mentioned in the FAQ.
  > > 
  > > Would you please delete it, for now?  We should not recommend
  > > sites that are useless when visited with LibreJS.

  > Don't you want to wait for their response first?

I expect it to take time to fix the problem, and we should not
keep on referring to the site while waiting.

When they fix it, restoring the reference will be quick and easy.


-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html.

Re: melpa.org doesn't work without nonfree software

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > The source for Melpa's website is available here, and is licensed
  > under the GPL v3: https://github.com/melpa/melpa/tree/master/html

Is that the source code for ALL the Javascript used in the page?

If so, it should be a small job to label the code so that LibreJS
will recognize it as free.  That doesn't mean we can assume it
will get done soon, but we can encourage the to do it.

But if there is other Javascript code used as well, that may
be harder.



-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html.