Re: GitLab nonfree JS code

[Aaron Wolf]

There are several that are better. I'd say most notably https://sr.ht/
which goes so far as not requiring JavaScript at all (I believe) in
addition to all of the software it runs being free. It's definitely a
host that is more proactively allied with the free software movement.

On 2021-03-04 9:42 p.m., Richard Stallman wrote:
> [I sent this message a few weeks ago but did not get a response.
> I think this issue is very important.  We should stop praising GitLab
> if it has done this]
> 
> 
> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
> 
> I've read that GitLab now requires nonfree software both to make an
> account (recaptcha) and to do various operations once you have an
> account.  I'm told that gitlab.torproject.org makes it impossible to
> communicate with the developers from the free world.
> 
> Thos needs to be tested, but assuming it is true, we need to downgrade
> our evaluation of GitLab ASAP.  For our evaluation to be incorrect in
> such an important way is an embarrassment as well as steering people
> wrong.
> 
> I suggest making an announcement about GitLab's change for the worse.
> The announcement could also say that GitHub is no better tham it was.
> 
> It would be nice to evaluate another site, if there is one that is better.
> 
> 
> Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2021 09:00:22 +0000
> From: BTD Master <btdmaster@disroot.org>
> To: rms@gnu.org
> Subject: Re: Gitlab
> Message-ID: <20210210090022.3ee08659@disroot.org>
> In-Reply-To: <E1l9i8e-0001LK-8k@fencepost.gnu.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
> 
>> Whose is that web site?  Is it run by gitlab?  Is it run by the Tor
>> Project?
> It is run by the Tor Project, using GitLab's open source Community
> Edition self-hosted by them. Hence the https://torproject.org root in
> https://gitlab.torproject.org.
>> What job does the site do?  Is it the source repo for the Tor Project?
>> If so, is it the PRINCIPAL source repo for the Tor Project?
> It is the principal source code repo for the Tor Project, but there are
> read-only mirrors of git commits. However, these are nearly pointless
> for reporting bugs or contributing; they only have the source code. Both
> https://github.com/torproject/tor
> and https://gitweb.torproject.org/tor.git/ suggest making contributions
> and creating issues on https://gitlab.torproject.org; although to some
> extent I can maybe understand why making a contribution or creating an
> issue would require running some client-side JavaScript (and even this
> is not always necessary, see https://sr.ht or even better
> https://try.gitea.io), reading what issues others created requiring
> this is simply unacceptable in any project supposed to be accessible.
>> Does that JS code carry a free license?  Does LibreJS accept it?
> I do not use LibreJS personally, however I think the source code of all
> of GitLab Community Edition is available under MIT. This means that
> non-premium GitLab users running the open source core CE are running
> free JavaScript, even though this is not mentioned per-file as I think
> LibreJS requires. This is good, but does not solve any of the
> accessibility issues I presented above.
>> Is this true for _all_ Gitlab repos now?  Or does each project
>> have a choice?
> The GitLab devs have confirmed this is intended. Self-hosted instance or
> not, doing anything on GitLab requires JavaScript and this will
> probably not change as issues are being closed regardless of scope
> (e.g. simply being able to read a specific issue from a direct link) as
> duplicates.
>>   > I guess very few people
>>   > have the hardware restrictions to consider running leaner options
>>   > (server-side and client-side) such as Gitea or will complain the
>>   > Codeberg does not have the CI/CD necessary,  
>>
>> I can't make any sense of that -- it depends on a lot of background
>> knowledge and I know none of it.
>>
> 
> There are other options, but it seems that everyone is complaining
> about the development experience on other platforms rather than anything
> else. For example, someone on Hacker News (I can't cite this, I forgot
> where this was; here's something mostly unrelated I found instead
> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24363397) has praised GitLab for
> their CI/CD as rivaling that of GitHub; hence, self-hosting Gitea
> (https://gitea.io) or using a public Gitea instance (personal favorite
> is Codeberg, https://codeberg.org) is impossible due to these
> requirements. I understand the requirements of a large project, and
> maybe this is justified when GitHub is centralised and someone wants to
> have the ability to self-host, but what I am most annoyed is when
> someone uses those features to justify this argument when they're not
> actually using the same features.
> Either way, I am really annoyed by the direction the Web is going, and
> I find it really sad that commercial open source seems to be happy with
> that direction (for the most part).
> 
> 
> 
> 
>