For Richard Matthew Stallman (RMS), fighting proprietary software, is the very essence of your life. Since the mid-1990s, he has devoted most of his time to promoting free software while denouncing the deprivation of liberty imposed, according to him and his movement, by so-called proprietary software.
It is in this logic that for more than a decade, the GNU project has decided to tackle the JavaScript trap.
“Many websites infringe on users' freedom by sending non-free JavaScript programs to the user's browser. We invited volunteers to develop free browser extensions to replace the JavaScript submitted by particular sites, ”says Richard Stallman's GNU Project site.
Speaking of JavaScript cheat, it refers to the fact of that users could unknowingly run non-free programs in their browsers. These programs are usually written in JavaScript, hence the name "JavaScript cheat."
Our first response to the problem of non-free JS code was to develop LibreJS, which allows Firefox-based browsers to detect and block that code. That protects us from running JS programs that are not free from a site, but it doesn't actually make the site work. Writing an extension for it, as we propose here, would accomplish that. It would also avoid the risk inherent in running software directly from someone else's website.
We could also solve the problem by convincing webmasters to fix their sites to work without JavaScript code, but convincing them turns out to be very difficult as they mostly don't understand the problem, much less care about it. Perhaps recommending the use of these extensions for their sites will convince them to pay attention to supporting non-JavaScript access.
This is also one of the reasons why the Free Software Foundation recommends against using Google.
“In general, most of Google's services require the execution of JavaScript code that is not free. If you refuse to do this, you will find that you will not be able to use these services. "
This would be the case, for example, of Google Docs, which requires the execution of non-free JavaScript code to edit a document, or even YouTube, which relies on non-free software (JavaScript code) for normal use of the site.
The new GNU Project solution is to create specific extensions of the site to replace the non-free JavaScript code they send to users' browsers.
Therefore, the GNU project invites supporters of its movement to contribute to this cause. However, it seems that you have to go site by site. Therefore, to begin with, a list of some of the most popular sites in the world has been proposed. "We invite volunteers to choose a site and write a browser extension for this site to work, assuming LibreJS blocks non-free JavaScript submitted by the site," reads the GNU Project site.
These extensions must be honest, they must not "cheat" .... It is impossible to implement real security through the JS code that is sent to the user, but whatever the site does to try to implement something similar to security, the extension must be carried out carried out faithfully. In particular, if the site asks the user to answer questions to prove that he is not a robot himself, the extension must display the same questions, get the answers, and submit them, allowing him to prove that he is human.
The initial goal is to write extensions to handle anonymous access to these sites. Instructions are even given on how everything should be done. However, isn't this initiative going too far?