Comment by brenns10 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by brenns10 | Hacker News Reader

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I'm not a fan of RMS, but as you noted, his blurb in the talk wasn't "Javascript the language is not free", or even "Javascript the ecosystem is not free", it's about the privacy invading factor of JS in a modern web browser. Since, as you said, software can be free and still invade your privacy.

He just doesn't want this GNU project to include support for a language whose primary purpose seems to be invading privacy -- even if it has a lot of great secondary purposes and a good open source ecosystem. Given that the GNU/FSF projects are all about advocacy in the area of software freedom and privacy, it seems like a reasonable perspective to have. Yeah, RMS definitely takes things to an extreme, but I don't see the "JS is implicitly evil" thing you're calling out, just refusing to appear to endorse or support something that goes against his principles.

And of course ironically enough those very principles mean he (should be...) perfectly happy with the emacs-ng fork, since that's part of the freedom he's advocating for.

yes, js can be used to invade privacy, but...

a) that's not its primary use by a long shot. The VAST majority of JS written has nothing to do with tracking / privacy stuff.

b) we don't need JS to invade your privacy on the web... Does he browse without images turned on too?!

(and i recognize you're just explaining his position not arguing against JS)

> “b) we don't need JS to invade your privacy on the web... Does he browse without images turned on too?”

He doesn’t really browse the web at all:

“””How I use the Internet

I am careful in how I connect to the internet.

Specifically, I refuse to connect through portals that would require me to identify myself, or to run any nontrivial nonfree Javascript code. I use LibreJS to prevent nonfree Javascript code from running.

I am careful in how I use the Internet.

I generally do not connect to web sites from my own machine, aside from a few sites I have some special relationship with. I usually fetch web pages from other sites by sending mail to a program (see https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/womb/hacks.git) that fetches them, much like wget, and then mails them back to me. Then I look at them using a web browser, unless it is easy to see the text in the HTML page directly. I usually try lynx first, then a graphical browser if the page needs it.

I occasionally also browse unrelated sites using IceCat via Tor. Except for rare cases, I do not identify myself to them. I think that plus Tor plus LibreJS is enough to prevent my browsing from being associated with me. “””

https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html

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