Re: Proposal for a new package on ELPA: Elbank

[Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>]

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  > > Does it run JS code from the site?  Or do its Python scripts
  > > substitute for the sites' JS code?

  > It looks like it does run JavaScript from the site, at least when that's
  > needed to perform an action (like logging in to some bank portals which
  > require JavaScript).

To recommend Weboob in the simplest way would be unethical -- we
must not steer people to using that nonfree Javascript code.

Perhaps there is a more complex way to recommend Weboob only for the
cases that don't require nonfree JS code, such that Elbank would
function for some banks and we would not be doing anything wrong.

Do they have a list of which bank portals work without running their
JS code, and which bank portals don't work?  Can you see roughly what
fraction of bank portals require Weboob users to run JS code?

Could we make and recommend a modified version which does not run JS
code from the banks, and will work with some banks?  That would fix
the ethical problem, making it possible for us to distribute Elbank
recommending the modified Weboob.

What we ideally want is to make Weboob handle those bank portals by
working around the JS code.  That would solve the practical problem in
an ethical way.

It will take time to motivate the community to do this, but we need to
think of the long term.  If we can find skilled people who want to do
this for one bank, that would get the ball rolling.

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