Richard Stallman: Free the Javascript
Richard Stallman, founder of the GNU project and the Free Software Foundation, warns against the “trap” of running web apps whose Javascript is not licensed.
Most web apps have source code that is “open” as far as being available in source code form (unless it’s obfuscated/compressed/generated). Indeed, this openness is a major factor in the rapid growth in our understanding of Ajax; formerly obscure tricks and techniques could be studied in their full visible source code glory, and patterns could be systematically mined from the huge corpus of real-world Javascript code out there. However, most of the Javascript code in web apps assumes a conventional copyright license, and Stallman’s complaint is that it should instead be issued under free software licenses.
Stallman suggests that free Javascript licenses should be one of the features of open web standards:
A strong movement has developed that calls for web sites to communicate only through formats and protocols that are free (some say “open”); that is to say, whose documentation is published and which anyone is free to implement. With the presence of programs in web pages, that criterion is necessary, but not sufficient. Javascript itself, as a format, is free, and use of Javascript in a web site is not necessarily bad. However, as we’ve seen above, it also isn’t necessarily ok. When the site transmits a program to the user, it is not enough for the program to be written in a documented and unencumbered language; that program must be free, too. “Only free programs transmitted to the user” must become part of the criterion for proper behavior by web sites.
Silently loading and running non-free programs is one among several issues raised by “web applications”. The term “web application” was designed to disregard the fundamental distinction between software delivered to users and software running on the server. It can refer to a specialized client program running in a browser; it can refer to specialized server software; it can refer to a specialized client program that works hand in hand with specialized server software. The client and server sides raise different ethical issues, even if they are so closely integrated that they arguably form parts of a single program. This article addresses only the issue of the client-side software. We are addressing the server issue separately.
The last comment is a reminder of the Affero GPL, which (among other things) obligates web developers to publish their server-side code if it uses AGPL software. Thus, the Free Software Foundation is targeting the full web app stack – server-side code and Javascript client code.
The article goes on to propose a Greasemonkey-related means of substituting in free code for Javascript web apps; as well as suggesting developers should open source their web apps, Stallman is proposing a world in which free software projects would arise to act as alternative web clients to those apps that don’t open source.
