Groups.io

Adonay Felipe Nogueira adfeno at openmailbox.org
Fri May 12 18:33:56 EDT 2017


> I am not using any special software to access; just my browser. 

That's the problem, website owners trick browsers into downloading and
using software automatically. You can take a proof of this by making a
simple .html document/page yourself, like so:

# Begin of file
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <body>
    <noscript>
      JavaScript disabled. Please answer this yourself: 2 + 2 = ?
    </noscript>
    <script>
      document.write("JavaScript enabled. The web browser will answer this for you: 2 + 2 = " + (2 + 2));
    </script>
  </body>
</html>
# End of file

As you can see: If JavaScript is disabled, your web browser won't be
tricked into running software automatically. Running software through
JavaScript isn't problematic. The problem is running *non-free* software
through JavaScript, because the language being used is made to run by
the visitor's web browser. This goes to show that the language used
doesn't matter.

Technical note: Some people advocate for a new web "client-side"
language, but changing the language doesn't change the fact that it's
still client-side, and most software is run automatically without a
standard way to check if it's free/libre software, and also will
probably not have a yes/no dialog or a whitelist.


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