Re: (was Re: Adding a description text property for a track) non-free javascript and ytdl

[Alexandre Garreau]

Le sabato, 26-a de marto 2022, 22-a horo kaj 51:20 CEST Yuchen Pei a écrit :

> On Sat 2022-03-26 14:53:31 +0100, Alexandre Garreau wrote:

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> 

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> > Le vendredo, 25-a de marto 2022, 5-a horo kaj 51:56 CET Yuchen Pei a écrit :

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> >> There's parsing, but no execution, so that's ok.

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> > but at what point do you go from parsing to execution? for instance if

> > you only looked at arithmetic formulas, and added the numbers, to

> > compute something that’s used to decrypt something, would that be

> > only parsing, not execution? what if you did that with strings? i

> > mean where does it begin? to me it begins from when it is recursive,

> > hence has a pile and the ability to memorize moar data… but i don’t

> > think all such programs «ought to be free» if, say, they’re small and

> > automatically generated out of random (i mean, even if those, then,

> > where not obfuscated, and had a free-software license… what would it

> > change?)

>

> Parsing json of video metadata and executing js code of decryption are

> different, just like parsing static html and executing js are different,

> just like read and eval in a repl are different.  I think that's pretty

> clear.  Whether the decryption code is nonfree is a different matter,

> and I cannot answer without seeing the decryption code.

you could consider the decryption program is the interpreter, and the randomly generated program is the key

i mean it *is* a tricky question: would quines generated through microkanren need a license? what is the legal status of automatically generated stuff? and how can it hurt? and to what extent the program that automatically generate it is needed?

for instance, if someone has a neural network generating random realistic faces, i’d like to have it, but if I display such an image resulting from it, i don’t consider it hurts my freedom, as i could be very unaware the image isn’t, say, taken from a person (where i couldn’t find such a program, because our DNA is still kinda »obfuscated« and misunderstood), and the situation politically wouldn’t change

while, if you have a set of randomly generated programs, that teach you nothing, that nobody ever did read nor understand in history, but with wich, with an interpreter, you can open a file… i mean, it does sound stupid because it’s bad security, but i don’t think there is a hard political threat there, as long as you are able to execute the script without internet, as it is purely deterministic, and once it is executed you won’t ever need it anymore…

i mean there is literally no use nor way to have these programs being free except by getting google’s serverside source… which will be of literally no use because their services are enormous, unhostable by anyone but them, and not federated nor implementing new formats/protocols we’d need…

I’m cc’ing rms because he usually has good political insight into such things, especially when they start getting confusing, and he might bring interesting ideas or points