Great news! : Updated GNU Framework Tries To Push "Free JavaScript"
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Out this Sunday is a major update to GNU ease.js, which relicenses this JavaScript framework to the GPLv3 and has several other changes. GNU ease.js helps the Free Software Foundation's case for the "importance of free JavaScript" on the web.
Full article here:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTYzMjE
From what I read, it is a JavaScript framework under a copyleft license with the intention of forcing other JavaScript to be copyleft.
I don't see this gaining traction as the more popular, mature, and stable jQuery and Mootools frameworks are under free software licenses. Then there's CoffeeScript that is also free software.
LibreJS is a failure at this point and proves that there needs to be a better way to detect JS licenses. Since Abrowser/Firefox and Chrome/Chromium support sourcemaps, why not have an extension check minified JS code for the sourcemap and analyze the unminified code for a license block?
I don't think anyone's said that the FSF's proposal for freeing JavaScript is "The One True Way." However, at the same time, there needs to be people talking about it if there are better ways and I don't really see that happening. The LibreJS mailing list is waiting.
Oh, and besides: The exact method isn't necessarily the problem anyway. The real issue is that most JavaScript is proprietary - read that as having no copyright or license information at all. LibreJS can support many different methods of detection and identification so that's not an issue. Even if sourcemaps were used, the real challenge seems (to me) to get people to free their stuff in the first place.
Yeah, I haven't seen SourceMaps used as much as it should, but that's probably because of it being a fairly new technology.
From experience, I try to minify my JS files as much as possible on a live site for the file size. If I want to make the source available, I put in a SourceMap link to the unminified JS file with the source file having some license headers.
The majority of developers don't know or care about having a license for their JS files. If they do know a thing or two, they intentionally make it non-free in a worry that a competitor steals the code.
The main reason I don't use LibreJS is that it hasn't yet whitelisted pdf.js, Mozilla's built in PDF viewer. I saw that somebody posted to the mailing list, but nobody replied.
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