Re: Condition to link to javascript code?

[Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>]

[[[ 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. ]]]

  > When a user exports an org-mode buffer to HTML, the HTML output can
  > contain links to external Javascript libraries.

I see.

  > We solved one of the problems by asking the author of the klipse
  > Javascript library to release it in a way that librejs accepts.

That will eliminate one problem for all the web pages that use klipse,
so it is a good thing.

  > There is still the more general problem of linking to a library hosted
  > on Google's servers.

That's the issue.  I don't think we should output references to a
library to be loaded directly off anyone's server.  (Google is no worse
or better than anyone else.)

  > Klipse is a Javascript library which allows to interpret a program
  > within a HTML page.

Does this mean it contains a Scheme interpreter written in Javascript?

Why in the world do we want Emacs to output such a thing???

  > This is not about *visiting* a server, it's about using a resource on
  > a server (in this case, the klipse.js library).

Yes, I know -- but either way it is directing the user to run software
off a specific server, and that's the issue.

  > It seems to me that the point of librejs is precisely to be able to
  > trust js code, even if it's not hosted on your server.

It avoids running nonfree software, but that still doesn't make
things entirely right.  Users should decide which version of a program
to run, not follow someone's decisions automatically.

  > Wouldn't it make more sense to simply include these files in the package? I
  > can imagine it could be quite annoying to be on a plane when exporting a
  > HTML file and not being able to use the result just because one doesn't
  > have any Internet connectivity.

That's another reason not to load files from a server.

  > Asking users to download klipse.js and use it on their own servers?

That would certainly solve the problem.  But I still have to ask,
why in the world do we want Emacs to output such a thing???


-- 
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.