Re: [fsf-community-team] Enhancements and fixes for js-encumbered websites

[Yuchen Pei]

W. Kosior <koszko@koszko.org> writes:

> > Nice documentation - lots of food for thought, thanks! (Also 
> > the 
> > project looks like a great initialtive)
>
> :)
>
> > One minor question about the documentation:
> >
> > > LibreJS' strategy of judging scripts based on a license 
> > > notice 
> > > fails for example when someone takes an X11-licensed js 
> > > library, 
> > > modifies it and serves a minified version of the modified lib 
> > > on 
> > > their site. LibreJS will allow this script to execute, even 
> > > though the modifications are obviously nonfree.  
> >
> > Why would the modifications be nonfree in this case? 
> > Minification 
> > is a derivative like compilation, and if the source is licensed 
> > under X11, and if the modified version is also under a free 
> > license, then there's no problem LibreJS allows it to execute.
>
> I am assuming the case where released are:
> - original source code, with free license
> - minified modified source code, with free license
> and the non-minified modified source code is kept secret

True, but in this case the webmaster would be lying, and it is 
equivalent to a bad developer making a binary out of proprietary 
code and saying the binary is from some freely licensed code. It 
would be good to verify the source-binary correspondence, but it 
is something extra, and not LibreJS's fault to allow the 
execution.

> Actually, it does not even need to be a _modified_ library. A 
> bad
> webmaster could just write some code from ground up and serve it
> minified-only with a free license attached.

This is almost equivalent to license a binary without source under 
GPL. IMO it is more of an issue of license compliance.
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