Taylan Kammer wrote:
On 06.03.2021 17:45, Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:
I had a suggestion about all the GNU software on your site - since
WebAssembly is now a reality, maybe you guys should get to making
the browser versions of AAAAAAAALL your software? :)
WebAssembly, and Javascript are two things that create a grave danger
towards user freedom. Specifically, Webassembly is an even more
obfuscated form of Javascript, putting users rights at risk as to how
they can run, study, redistribute, and modify the programs that they
run on their computers. You can read more about it here:
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html
Shouldn't Wasm be seen as a compilation target, that can be implemented
by GCC? So for instance GNU coreutils, bash, etc. could be compiled to
run in a browser tab. Needs a "little bit" more underlying machinery of
course, like a filesystem, syscalls and so on. :-)
WebAssembly has access to POSIX APIs? That sounds like an absolutely
insane security risk to me, like ActiveX but with cross-platform
bytecode to make portable malware easy. Effectively Java applets with
no sandbox at all... Maybe LibreJS should categorically block all
WebAssembly objects for safety reasons? Mallory could easily just lie
about his malware blob being GPL...
If POSIX APIs are not available to WebAssembly, then there is no reason
to even consider porting GNU software, unless Rohit is volunteering to
write a WebAssembly-platform-specific kernel and the backend support for
GCC? Otherwise, shulie's very rude response is probably more
appropriate than any of us would like to admit, even if it amounted to
feeding the troll.
-- Jacob