Re: [Bug-gnuzilla] DuckDuckGo's JavaScript

[Narcis Garcia]

In comparison:
Do you remember the controversy about UbuntuOne service? It's like the
difference between that and OwnCloud: OwnCloud is "the lesser of the
evils around" when talking about filesharing or multiplatform file service.

Giving the possibility of running your own service node is a (small?)
freedom warranty about the hosted source code. It's better AGPL than
DDG-Unknown-License, and the service design is made by a transparent
project.

An important question is: In what direction we want to walk to?
There are a lot of other situations not so easy like this one, when a
lot of people have developed good and friendly solutions.


El 10/03/15 a les 10:42, Jonas Wielicki ha escrit:
> On 10.03.2015 10:16, Narcis Garcia wrote:
>> I've not analyzed deeply DDG but, when I perform a search, In don't see
>> shown URLs in HTML code. It can mean that is when user clicks on each
>> link that this URL is built (It can have some sense to track what users
>> do and where they go).
> 
> I do not understand what you mean here. I find the URLs in both the
> plain-HTML and the JS version of DDG. Note that in the JS version, the
> results are loaded kind of on-demand, so they probably won’t appear when
> wgetting.
> 
> Also, in the JS version, links are redirected just before they are
> followed by the browser to a de-referrer service of DDG, which hides
> your search query from the site you are going to.
> 
>> Additionally, DDG results include (and put on top) other things not
>> asked or priorized by user, 
> 
> That is, in my opinion, a feature. Many of my DDG requests are
> successful due to that priorization. And they claim that it works
> without filter bubbling, so they’re doing quite a great job at that.
> 
>> and tracked with add.ddg.gg
> 
> ddg claims that they are not tracking. Now it is possible that IceCat
> and/or you and/or ddg have different notions of what "tracking" means.
> Reading through their statement on what information they collect [1], it
> seems pretty reasonable though.
> 
> 
> Also, you can turn both, the "quick result bar" at the top and the
> redirection of requests, off in the settings when using the JS version
> (in the non-JS version, they both are not used). Which are probably
> stored in a cookie, which would, in theory, again allow certain
> tracking. The question is, whether DDG does that. We can’t really know.
> But that is an issue of *any* web service; tracking is not limited to
> JavaScript and Cookies.
> 
> I think that DDG is, if at all, the lesser of the evils around here. A
> service under the AGPL would probably be preferable, but then again, is
> there a way to actually verify that the service runs the code it claims
> to run, and not a version with patched-in analytics?
> 
> With the JS issue, has anyone asked DDG to make their JS libre?
> 
> regards,
> jwi
> 
>    [1]: https://duckduckgo.com/privacy#s4
> 
>>
>> It's still very strange to see DDG as a default tool in a project like
>> GnuZilla.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> El 10/03/15 a les 09:28, Svetlana A. Tkachenko ha escrit:
>>>> It seems the same matter as using Google or any other abusive service.
>>>
>>> There are two types of abuse from Google, tracking its users and non-free 
>>> js. From DDG there is only one, and the HTML version technically has 
>>> neither, unless the user is clever enough to click or type through to its 
>>> homepage.
>>>
>>> Svetlana
>>>
>>> --
>>> http://gnuzilla.gnu.org
>>>
>>
>> --
>> http://gnuzilla.gnu.org
>>
> 
> 
> 
> 
> --
> http://gnuzilla.gnu.org
>