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Comment by phpnode | Hacker News Reader

Their definition of "non-trivial" includes using computed member expressions, so the following program is not supported:

    var greetings = {world: "Hello World"};
    var subject = 'world';
    console.log(greetings[subject]);

This is zealotry in action, who do they think is going to use this?

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I'm one of the maintainers for LibreJS, and we are discussing the issue of triviality right now. If you have any input, don't hesitate to send a message to the mailing list (help-librejs@gnu.org) -- https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-librejs

Its not possible for humans to determine if a work qualify under copyright, so getting a computer to do it is about as impossible task as one can make it.

You can put in arbitrary heuristics and argue how many expressions, lines, or words should be required for copyright status, but then there will always be up to a judge if you guessed right.

The options here seems to either not include any detection for the copyright scope, or try invent something and hope that people will send in patches when it hit a false positive.

If you think such plugin should detect something as trivial code which it currently classify as not, send in a patch.

That's only if there is no license block. If there's a license block, it takes it at face value. So if the code really is free, putting a license statement to that effect should be enough.

I know people are going to say "what about minification", but c'mon, it's the 21st century, web servers know how to compress data streams when they send them and web browsers know how to decompress them. Minification for the purpose of saving bandwidth is a bugbear.

Minification improves the effectiveness of algorithms like Gzip by a large margin. It is generally a great idea to minify then Gzip.

https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/performance/o...

https://savannah.gnu.org/task/?13304

People who care more about freedom than comfort?

It's strange how age and the passage of time can change you. When I was in my 20's, I used to say things exactly like this. The further along I get into my 30's, the more I read things like this and experience the same feeling I get when reading "9/11 Truth" material.

But how is the above sample 'unfree'?

There is no license notice in the sample. LibreJS looks for a license notice as a comment in the script: http://www.gnu.org/software/librejs/manual/librejs.html#Free...

The main goal of the GPL is to allow that programs can be understood and modified by user. A "trivial" javascript program accomplishes that, regardless of license.

The sample above is "non-trivial" according to the set of heuristics they are using, so they are just saying "if the program is not trivial, then you need to explicitly state that it is GPL for us to consider it free"

Not GPL, but any free software license.

Without a license, the assumption is that it is proprietary.

So, all that in-line javascript on my website suddenly is "proprietary" even though it's usually just a few lines?

(as a consequence, my entire site won't work for users with this enabled)

Please contact your local politician and make the copyright scope more sane. That way, a few lines won't be copyright-able and we don't need licenses for it.

Seriously guy -- why even bother surfing the internet?

I mean -- the websites you are visiting are bound to be using non-free proprietary software. At least a few of them.

Actually -- the routers your packets travel through are using proprietary non-free software!

The BIOS that boots your PC is non-free and proprietary!

Just throw your computer out -- that is the only sure way to stop using non-free software. (actually, don't throw it out -- just mail it to me ;)

That's why triviality heuristics are there.

People who care more about the delusional ranting of Stallman than actually using any web service today?

Oh yeah, using jquery is "non-trivial".

What a load of crap.

jQuery, even in its compressed form makes a license known.

It's not ideal, but I'll take it.

See this: http://www.gnu.org/software/librejs/manual/librejs.html#Java...

The $.doSomething(); example

Stallman talking about the web is like a Catholic priest talking about sexual intercourse: he has no practical experience with it and has no idea what he's talking about.

> Stallman talking about the web is like a Catholic priest talking about sexual intercourse: he has no practical experience with it

Completely tangentially, its quite possible to be a Catholic priest [1], have never violated any Catholic teaching or discipline, and have practical experience with sexual intercourse. Catholic priests can't get married, and men usually can't become priests in the Latin Rite if they are currently married [2], but widowers can be ordained priests in the Latin Rite, and married men can become priests in the Eastern Rites.

And, in any case, even in theory, becoming a priest doesn't require one to never have violated teaching on this (or any other) point before so doing.

[1] in the usual sense of a "priest in a church in union with Rome", not extending that to breakaway or never-in-union churches that might have "Catholic" in their name.

[2] But there are exceptions to this rule.

Maybe so, that's why he asked people like John Resig (creator of jQuery) and myself to assist him.

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