Because I get the vast majority of my software using apt install instead of a web browser, and I trust my software distribution (Trisquel) to only distribute free software, this isn’t usually a concern.
Just to be clear, I am not saying customizations are necessarily bad, just that they may be bad if they are nonfree, so a way to be sure you avoid running nonfree software is to disable customizations.
To be clear, I am not trying to say Discourse is nonfree. It’s only this particular distribution of Discourse (Discourse Meta) that appears to include nonfree software.
I should have mentioned in my previous post that another reason I thought this distribution would be free is that the about page for Discourse says " There is only one version of Discourse – the awesome open source version.". This is, again, technically true because the plugins are not part of Discourse, but it felt misleading to me.
Discourse might not have control over third party distributions, but I would have expected Discourse instances hosted by Discourse to be free software if they are saying what they say on the about page. I might have also expected a license and/or framework that would effectively require derivatives to be free software, which there kind of is, since Discourse is GPL, but I guess it doesn’t cover plugins.
I think charging money for software or services is fine; usually the “free” in “free software” means “libre”, as in you are free to do what you want with it (copy, modify, etc.), after you get it. It does not necessarily mean that it is “free” as in “gratis” i.e. zero cost.
Strictly speaking, yes, there is no one stopping me, but it would be illegal, which seems bad. For private use this might work out, but generally public software repos and app stores don’t want to include code illegally, and some people who I might want to use the software may be uncomfortable running illegally copied code. I’m not sure I have the right approach; maybe I should just totally ignore copyright, but that seems like not the best option when it’s feasible to avoid illegal and nonfree software.
No worries! I don’t think you’re being rude, and I don’t yet feel like we’re going in circles.
What do you mean by this? If the software is free that means I can modify it; therefore I do have control over what it does.
I don’t think free is the same as trusted; perhaps I should have said “arbitrary” instead of “untrusted”, but my point was that most browsers will execute whatever code a webpage gives them, and since I often visit websites I have never visited before, many websites I visit are “untrusted”. For these websites, I have no reason to think they will not send nonfree software.
Regarding NPM, I consider it more trusted than an arbitrary website, but maybe not as trusted as my apt or guix repos. Though, trust is not one-dimensional; although I would not trust a new package on NPM just because it is on NPM, I would trust that when I download JQuery from NPM it really is JQuery. NPM may make mistakes that allow an attacker to replace JQuery, but NPM could take measures to avoid malware that would not be as realistic for site-served JavaScript (e.g. pre-publish automated/manual review, post-publish crowd-sourced review, automated checking that minified/obfuscated scripts match source code, rules against downloading and running arbitrary code at runtime). Importantly, when malware is found on NPM, there’s a third party (NPM, as opposed to the software developer) to report it to so it can be removed. This is not the case for site-served JavaScript - the only one who can remove it is the site operator.
Does that mean the listed commit hash would be incorrect if a server administrator made modifications and didn’t also change the listed commit hash? I thought updating software would change the commit hash automatically, and I (incorrectly?) assumed the listed commit hash would be updated automatically.
Would plugin-injected JavaScript be disabled with safe_mode=no_themes,no_unofficial_plugins?
So, would the only way to avoid nonfree software while using Discourse be to package a Discourse client as a browser extension or Haketilo package or something similar?
I’m not sure what you mean by that considering my original question is about software freedom, and not trust.
I disagree that everyone you listed has to be trusted.
The server administrators would not have to be trusted if you don’t run software served by them, for example if you get the Discourse client from GitHub and package it so it can be used with that server.
In many cases, people collaborating on software might read some of each others’ commits, so I don’t have to trust all authors individually.
So that would mean the Discourse Meta client is proprietary software, right? Though, it is possible to use safe mode to disable the plugin JS.
Maybe, but that’s not very helpful if I want to avoid nonfree software.
@NateDhaliwal
I have read the license in the Discourse git repo, but (because of the CLA) it does not necessarily apply to derivatives of Discourse outside of that repo. I would like to see a notice on every Discourse distribution that says which of the distributed software is libre. It would even (IMO) fit with the spirit of the GPL: “you must show them these terms so they know their rights”.
Yes, it is possible, to run JavaScript from a browser extension or proxy, such a Haketilo or GreaseMonkey, though this can be very impractical for some software, for example if it updates very often, as would be the case for software where data is baked into the JavaScript software. Haketilo also doesn’t have support for some kinds of scripts, for example scripts with a type of “module”.
Yes, I think your understanding is correct overall. Though packaging the JavaScript as a browser extension or for Haketilo or GreaseMonkey would effectively result in an independent installed client, even though it would be using JavaScript.
サーバー管理者はコミットハッシュを変更せずに変更を加えることができます。また、プラグインもJavaScriptコードを挿入する可能性があります。
もちろん冗談です。私の言いたいのは、すべてがオープンソースまたはリブレでなくても、十分な信頼が存在しうるということです。
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