Language Selection

English French German Italian Portuguese Spanish

Free Software Foundation (FSF) Tackling Proprietary JavaScript

Filed under
GNU
  • FSF announces JShelter browser add-on to combat threats from nonfree JavaScript

    The Free Software Foundation (FSF) today announced the JShelter project, an anti-malware Web browser extension to mitigate potential threats from JavaScript, including fingerprinting, tracking, and data collection. The project is supported by NLnet Foundation's Next Generation Internet (NGI) Zero Privacy & Trust Enhancing Technologies fund. Collaborators include Libor Polčák and Bednář Martin (Brno University of Technology), Giorgio Maone (NoScript), and Ana Isabel Carvalho and Ricardo Lafuente (Manufactura Independente). The JShelter browser add-on is in development and the first release is available.

    Most modern Web sites contain a growing number of programs that the user's Web browser downloads and runs automatically as pages are loaded. While these JavaScript programs can provide functionality to a site in conjunction with native browser features, they are also a significant liability both from security and privacy perspectives. Moreover, the software is typically licensed under unethical terms by the FSF's standards, disempowering users and hampering learning and security. With a thirty-six year history of defending software ethics, The FSF recognizes the importance and urgency of both aspects of the problem and its role in solving this significant challenge. In response, the FSF has been working on an ambitious new initiative, the JShelter browser extension. This browser add-on will limit the potential for JavaScript programs to do harmful actions by restricting default behavior and adding a layer of control. JShelter is a significant next step in the FSF's "Free JavaScript Campaign," providing a new tool that can be used in conjunction with another related extension, GNU LibreJS, which allows the user to identify and run only freely licensed scripts.

  • Keeping your freedom intact when registering or renewing as a DMCA agent

    DMCA agent registration only lasts three years before it must be renewed. Use these add-ons to register and renew without the use of nonfree JavaScript.
    Users shouldn't be forced to use nonfree software when interacting with their own government. Every user has the right to control their own computing, and the government shouldn't be forcing you to download and install proprietary software just to take advantage of its services. But when it comes to registering and renewing the status as an agent under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in the United States, that's exactly what the government expects you to do.

    The U.S. Copyright Office requires a registered agent to renew their status every three years to help ensure that the agent directory stays up to date. However, the renewal can only be done online, and you are required to use nonfree software. We find this unacceptable. Fortunately, three years ago we devised a way to complete an agent’s registration circumventing the use of nonfree Javascript. Today, we confirm the process still works and it can be applied to renewal as well. We encourage everyone to learn more about these tools to access your government services in software freedom.

FSF job opportunity: Outreach and communicat\ions coordinator

  • FSF job opportunity: Outreach and communications coordinator

    The Free Software Foundation (FSF), a Massachusetts 501(c)(3) charity with a worldwide mission to protect computer user freedom, seeks a motivated and organized Boston-based individual to be our full-time outreach and communications coordinator.

    Reporting to the executive director, the outreach and communications coordinator works closely with our campaigns, licensing, technical, and operations teams to plan, write, edit, publish, and promote high-quality, effective materials, both digital and printed. These materials are a critical part of advancing the FSF's work in support of the GNU Project, free software adoption, copyleft licensing, and freedom on the Internet; and against Digital Restrictions Management (DRM), software patents, and proprietary software. Nearly every publication from the FSF goes through this public-facing position, tying together our work across various constituencies.

Free Software Foundation Introduces JShelter Browser Add-on...

  • Free Software Foundation Introduces JShelter Browser Add-on to Restrict JavaScript API

    The Free Software Foundation has unveiled the project JShelter , which develops a browser add-on to protect against threats posed by JavaScript on websites, including hidden identification , movement tracking, and user data collection. The project code is distributed under the GPLv3 license. The add-on is prepared for Firefox , Google Chrome , Opera , Brave, Microsoft Edge and other browsers based on the Chromium engine.

    The project is being developed as a joint initiative funded by the foundation NLnet Foundation. JShelter has also been joined by Giorgio Maone, the creator of the add-on NoScript , as well as the founders of the project J ++ and the authors of the add ons JS-Shield – and JavaScript Restrictor . The add-on is used as a basis for the new project JavaScript Restrictor .

    JShelter can be thought of as a firewall for JavaScript APIs available to sites and web applications. The add-on provides four levels of protection, as well as a flexible API access configuration mode. Level zero completely allows access to all APIs, the first one includes minimal locks that do not disrupt the work of pages, the second level balances between locks and compatibility, and the fourth level includes strict blocking of everything unnecessary.

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.

More in Tux Machines

digiKam 7.7.0 is released

After three months of active maintenance and another bug triage, the digiKam team is proud to present version 7.7.0 of its open source digital photo manager. See below the list of most important features coming with this release. Read more

Dilution and Misuse of the "Linux" Brand

Samsung, Red Hat to Work on Linux Drivers for Future Tech

The metaverse is expected to uproot system design as we know it, and Samsung is one of many hardware vendors re-imagining data center infrastructure in preparation for a parallel 3D world. Samsung is working on new memory technologies that provide faster bandwidth inside hardware for data to travel between CPUs, storage and other computing resources. The company also announced it was partnering with Red Hat to ensure these technologies have Linux compatibility. Read more

today's howtos

  • How to install go1.19beta on Ubuntu 22.04 – NextGenTips

    In this tutorial, we are going to explore how to install go on Ubuntu 22.04 Golang is an open-source programming language that is easy to learn and use. It is built-in concurrency and has a robust standard library. It is reliable, builds fast, and efficient software that scales fast. Its concurrency mechanisms make it easy to write programs that get the most out of multicore and networked machines, while its novel-type systems enable flexible and modular program constructions. Go compiles quickly to machine code and has the convenience of garbage collection and the power of run-time reflection. In this guide, we are going to learn how to install golang 1.19beta on Ubuntu 22.04. Go 1.19beta1 is not yet released. There is so much work in progress with all the documentation.

  • molecule test: failed to connect to bus in systemd container - openQA bites

    Ansible Molecule is a project to help you test your ansible roles. I’m using molecule for automatically testing the ansible roles of geekoops.

  • How To Install MongoDB on AlmaLinux 9 - idroot

    In this tutorial, we will show you how to install MongoDB on AlmaLinux 9. For those of you who didn’t know, MongoDB is a high-performance, highly scalable document-oriented NoSQL database. Unlike in SQL databases where data is stored in rows and columns inside tables, in MongoDB, data is structured in JSON-like format inside records which are referred to as documents. The open-source attribute of MongoDB as a database software makes it an ideal candidate for almost any database-related project. This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the MongoDB NoSQL database on AlmaLinux 9. You can follow the same instructions for CentOS and Rocky Linux.

  • An introduction (and how-to) to Plugin Loader for the Steam Deck. - Invidious
  • Self-host a Ghost Blog With Traefik

    Ghost is a very popular open-source content management system. Started as an alternative to WordPress and it went on to become an alternative to Substack by focusing on membership and newsletter. The creators of Ghost offer managed Pro hosting but it may not fit everyone's budget. Alternatively, you can self-host it on your own cloud servers. On Linux handbook, we already have a guide on deploying Ghost with Docker in a reverse proxy setup. Instead of Ngnix reverse proxy, you can also use another software called Traefik with Docker. It is a popular open-source cloud-native application proxy, API Gateway, Edge-router, and more. I use Traefik to secure my websites using an SSL certificate obtained from Let's Encrypt. Once deployed, Traefik can automatically manage your certificates and their renewals. In this tutorial, I'll share the necessary steps for deploying a Ghost blog with Docker and Traefik.