[Bug 269656] Re: AN IRRELEVANT LICENSE IS PRESENTED TO YOU FREE-OF-CHARGE ON STARTUP

[kafpauzo]

@unimatrix9: "Would it have been better for firefox to move anti-
phishing non free software to the add-ons that you install on choice?"

The anti-phishing does not involve any restricted software inside
Firefox. All of the restricted software is on Google's servers. The
software inside Firefox is free.

Firefox consults the service that is described at
http://code.google.com/apis/safebrowsing/ (or something similar). The
code inside Firefox that does this is free software.

The purists are worried that the software on Google's servers is
restricted. The purists feel that because Google hasn't released their
_server_ software, this makes Google's service non-free. They feel that
Firefox becomes non-free just because it connects to servers that run
non-free software.

My opinion is that such a purist view is extreme and impractical. I
don't want my free software to be restricted to contacting only servers
that run free software. I think this would be a very severe restriction.

I'm delighted that I'm invited and welcome to install huge lots of free-
as-in-freedom software on my system, but I don't want to insist that
every server that I contact do the same, nor do I feel that Firefox
becomes any less free because of restrictions on Google's server
software.

-- 
AN IRRELEVANT LICENSE IS PRESENTED TO YOU FREE-OF-CHARGE ON STARTUP
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/269656
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