Re: [Help-librejs] Can't View Quitter Websites Despite Free JS?

[Andrew 'Leny' Lindley]

From: Michael Mehrazar <address@hidden>
Subject: [Help-librejs] Can't View Quitter Websites Despite Free JS?
Date: Thu, 09 Jul 2015 17:11:01 -0400

> I am a user of GNU social, and some of the most popular nodes of that
> service are the various "quitter" websites. (quitter.se, quitter.es, etc)
> 
> Unlike many other nodes, these websites require Javascript even to view
> their contents. However, LibreJS says that they have released the
> Javascript under a free license, specifically the "GNU AFFERO GENERAL
> PUBLIC LICENSE version 3"
> 
> Despite this fact, I am still unable to view the websites with LibreJS.
> I was wondering if anyone else faced this problem, and if so is this a
> bug or am I missing something.

Hi Michael,

When I try quitter.se with GNU Icecat 31.7.0 under Trisquel 7.0 it
shows LibreJS allows all but one file.  Having a parser error on
this one

https://quitter.se/plugins/Qvitter/js/qvitter.js?changed=20150706193230

Which reading it, is GNU Affero Licensed.  Even when I whitelist this
the Javascript does not start.  Disabling LibreJS with the handy
checkbox on the about:icecat page it runs fine.  

It seems to me that there is at least a LibreJS bug where a parser
error on one file has propagated to a complete failure to run any
Javascript.  However, the license block in the failing file is
identical to others which are on quitter.se and absent LibreJS it
seems to execute correctly.  So it's tempting to suspect the parser.

Lastly from those files we see the license block at the start of each
file thus

...
@licstart  The following is the entire license notice for the             �
  �     JavaScript code in this page.

...

  �     @licend  The above is the entire license notice                         
  �
  �     for the JavaScript code in this page.                                   
  �
...

Which suggests there could well be a performance bug here in that the
plain English meaning of the text indicates this block should be to
the parser grammatically a terminator and no further parsing should
have been attempted.  I.e. why hasn't LibreJS's parser short circuited
out when it's seen this?

Leny