Re: Savannah vs. Gitlab

[Svetlana A. Tkachenko]

> did you mean the unknown scripts running on Github's servers making up
> their web site?

No.

Backend = software GitHub runs on its servers. Whether it's free or not
is up to them. The burden of running proprietary software there is on
them.

Frontend = the things we download and render in our web browsers. It has
been established among GNU project that all scripts users run need to be
free. It is not ethical to publish non-free scripts on the web. But
GitHub does that.

(There is this question of whether the HTML markup also needs to be
free. I think yes. I have not got a second opinion on this, though, and
it is another can of worms.)

> The word "frontend" would be the word Ivan and me have misunderstood:
> the "computer in front of you" = the web browser / client running
> JavaScripts.

Think of it as of a TV. The movie you see is the front. The wires are at
the back.

> I learned ~1 year ago that there is an FSF initiative (license? I don't
> know the
> right word) that all software running on a web server must also be open
> source
> to be considered "free speech".

It may, but it is not your primary concern: you are just a user.
The bigger concern is what is running on your web client (i.e. in your
own browser).

For this reason I use and recommend LibreJS:
https://www.gnu.org/software/librejs/

-- 
Svetlana A. Tkachenko
Member of the Free Software Foundation
www.fsf.org  www.gnu.org www.freenode.net