I think rather than the conspiracy theorist approach, it has become more
difficult to compile Firefox because it now contains every operating system
and GUI service, without exception (take a look at this list:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API), and its own
interpretive language with JIT compilation. I do agree, however, that we
might eventually see a more closed web, with DRM protection being applied
to HTML pages. However, this would not prevent the Open Source world from
continuing to use web facilities without such protections, especially with
our own browsers.

There simply isn't another platform that provides a GUI with binary
portability to so many platforms. The next runners up would be PostScript
(and I wish Display PostScript had won) and the ANSI terminal.

There was one program before the browser which, sinisterly, attempted to
offer every service and to become the environment in which you did
everything. Fortunately, only a minority of programmers were sucked in by
GNU Emacs. :-)

    Thanks

    Bruce

On Mon, Dec 30, 2024 at 3:03 PM marc <marcxdv@???> wrote:

> > These days, it makes sense for everything I write to have a web
> interface.
> > Most of our compiled and interpretive languages run everywhere as long as
> > you don't start working with the native GUI, and there's no need to port
> a
> > web-based GUI. There aren't any facilities that we would expect on a
> native
> > GUI and are missing from the web these days.
>
> Hello
>
> So I am taking the exact opposite position. And you can quote me on that:
>
> "Don't include a web browser in your dependencies if you write in free
> software." - me
>
> The web is being encircled and captured by commercial interests.
>
> Significant distributions with substantial technical skills (including
> alpine and iirc nix/guix ?) have struggled to build, nevermind ship,
> firefox binaries.
>
> Some may call these edge cases, but I think it is a sign of what is to
> come - that the "modern" web will only be available on a few platforms,
> with weaponised complexity excluding the rest. One suspects the next tooth
> on the ratchet will exclude open hardware for being far too "insecure" and
> insufficiently DRMed to host something as important as a browser which
> can access online banking.
>
> Game theorists might notice a defect versus co-operate pattern here: If
> everybody defects to the convenient choice of a web then we'll all
> be stuck in the surveilled and ad-infested worst case.
>
> Sort of related thoughts on this can be found at
> https://scottrichmond.me/the-web-is-too-big/
>
> So please do use small, exotic or long forgotten gui toolkits.
> As long as their dependency graph isn't too crazy either.
>
> regards
>
> marc
> _______________________________________________
> Dng mailing list
> Dng@???
> Manage your subscription:
> https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
> Archive: https://lists.dyne.org/lurker/list/dng.en.html
>


--
Bruce Perens K6BP