Re: Helping new contributors

[quiliro]

>>    Discourse = freedom respecting software under a free software license.
>>    It runs on someone else's server.  (as it is for communities)  It uses
>>    javascript in your browser.
>>    why people use it = People like Discourse communities because the
>>    software has made it easy to find new posts, get rid of spam before it
>>    starts, and keep the spirit of the community going.
>
> You have not analysed it well. Discourse is full free software that
> everybody may run on their own: https://github.com/discourse/discourse

In fact, it being free software, presents another problem, the
javascript trap https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.en.html
.  Although ECMAscript is not the only language that runs on a browser,
it is the most used to run the server owner's software on the client's
machine.  I think it is abusive for someone else to run software on
my machine without me expressly installing it.  Running software on a
machine makes that software command that machine.  Nobody should be
allowed to to command some elses's machine.  It is like trusting someone
else to drive your car.  It is seldom done and under very specific
circumstances.

Of course we cannot audit each software, that is why we have free
distros to check the software for us.  LibreJS
https://www.gnu.org/software/librejs/ cannot keep up with the same pace
as a distro for the volume of in-browser software to audit.  (At least
not as reliably.)  That is the reason that I avoid browsers that run
external software inside them; I defend my right to control my machine.