Re: On being web-friendly and why info must die

[Achim Gratz]

[This is getting off-topic for Emacs, so maybe suggest another venue to
 discuss it.]

Richard Stallman writes:
>   > At the time you were enthusiastic about my webapp.
>
> A few years ago I became aware of how "web apps", by running software
> straight off someone else's web page, deny the user control over his
> computing.  To make Javascript acceptable we need to give users a way
> to develop and run modified versions of it.

I don't think that Javascript (or rather ECMAScript) has anything to do
with that, except as a prominent example.  SaaS (software as a service)
is another one and there certainly are ways to deny the user control
over locally installed software.

> Thus, the truly ethical way to put Javascript code into service is NOT
> to send it from a server at all; rather, to package it for installation
> locally just like C programs.

I see that as a red herring mostly.  For most of the scripting in web
pages it wouldn't be difficult to extract the scripts and inject local
modifications.  Support for additional user scripting has been available
as an extension in some browsers (GreaseMonkey and others).  As another
example, NoScript (a Firefox extension) has so-called surrogates that
replace some tracking scripts with definitions that do nothing, but keep
the expected API intact.  I'm not aware of a general "snarf all scripts
and from then on use the local copy" functionality existing, however.
It would be possible to implement it using the same facilities that user
scripts or surrogates use, however.

The real issues are those parts of the data and application that then
still are not under the user's control and even where they are, the fact
that the owner of the service and other parties gets to see what the
user is doing.


Regards,
Achim.
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