[nmglug] Speaking of userspace...

[Sam Noble]

On Thu, Jun 25, 2015 at 08:44:40AM -0600, esque wrote:
> How about you? ;) 

Right, because if I was going to work on a free software browser, I'd
pick the one where my paid collaborators say things like:

# 'The fact is that an end user should not care if software downloads a
# "binary blob" without running it. This is functionally equivalent to
# downloading anything from the Internet, a JPG file for example. Chromium
# downloads a bunch of things on startup, and nobody seems to mind. Just
# because hotword.nexe happens to be an executable blob doesn't really
# make a difference.'¹

Instead I think I'd prefer to work on the one where the code that they
silently download and install is free software:
# Firefox does auto-download an OpenH264 binary on systems without a
# supported H.264 decoder library (if this feature is enabled, which it
# isn't currently in Debian's iceweasel packages). But note that OpenH264
# is free software available under the BSD license:
# Firefox downloads binaries from Cisco because Cisco can legally
# distribute this software in binary form in countries where H.264 patents
# apply, while Mozilla can't do so directly.² 

:sigh: (That actually sounds like a neat-ish legal hack for our tricky
patent law, but) I haven't heard of this before, and it's frustrating if
it really is silently downloading code in the background. Though as
someone who lets a lot of unsourced javascript run when browsing the www
I probably have scarier things than this happening, though still not as
scary as chromium installing a thingymablob that if the debian devs
hadn't been wise enough to disable all of NaCL in chromium could be
happily sending private conversations across the internet.

-- 
sam

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9736033
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9729379