Counterpoint: the judicious use of abstraction is/can be, in some instances, the solution to giving users agency and reconfigurability.

Software that has to be torn down is the result of software built upon bad abstractions. Abstractions are not ipso fact bad. They just need to be chosen on the criteria of whether or not they solve a problem.

This comment is close, but it's also about control.

It's clear that gklitt is referring to the ability of extensions to augment the browser, but: * it's not clear that he has applied the same thought process to the extension itself (which is also software, after all) * the conception of in-browser content as software tooling is likely a large reason why the perspective he endorses here is not more widespread—that content is fundamentally a copy of a particular work, in the parlance of US copyright law (which isn't terribly domain-appropriate here so much as its terminology is useful)

Previously: Open Source Is Not Enough and Free software is not enough: on practical user freedom.

See also: "Even GNU's philosophy has a few puzzle pieces missing from the box."

This is an excellent piece, even though the writing is (probably intentionally) in places too obscure.

See also An app can be a home-cooked meal along with this comment containing RMS's remarks with his code-as-recipe metaphor in the HN thread about Sloan's post:

some of you may not ever write computer programs, but perhaps you cook. And if you cook, unless you're really great, you probably use recipes. And, if you use recipes, you've probably had the experience of getting a copy of a recipe from a friend who's sharing it. And you've probably also had the experience — unless you're a total neophyte — of changing a recipe. You know, it says certain things, but you don't have to do exactly that. You can leave out some ingredients. Add some mushrooms, 'cause you like mushrooms. Put in less salt because your doctor said you should cut down on salt — whatever. You can even make bigger changes according to your skill. And if you've made changes in a recipe, and you cook it for your friends, and they like it, one of your friends might say, “Hey, could I have the recipe?” And then, what do you do? You could write down your modified version of the recipe and make a copy for your friend. These are the natural things to do with functionally useful recipes of any kind.

Now a recipe is a lot like a computer program. A computer program's a lot like a recipe: a series of steps to be carried out to get some result that you want. So it's just as natural to do those same things with computer programs — hand a copy to your friend. Make changes in it because the job it was written to do isn't exactly what you want. It did a great job for somebody else, but your job is a different job. And after you've changed it, that's likely to be useful for other people. Maybe they have a job to do that's like the job you do. So they ask, “Hey, can I have a copy?” Of course, if you're a nice person, you're going to give a copy. That's the way to be a decent person.

similar to my strawman for language skins

Why is Standard Ebooks sending content-security-policy: default-src 'self';? This is not an appropriate use. (And it keeps things like the Hypothesis sidebar from loading.)

Kartik made a similar remark in an older version of his mission page:

Open source would more fully deliver on its promise; are the sources truly open if they take too long to grok, so nobody makes the effort?

https://web.archive.org/web/20140903010656/http://akkartik.name/about

Bookmarklets and the JS console seem to be the workaround.

For very large customizations, you may run into browser limits on the effective length of the bookmarklet URI. For a subset of well-formed programs, there is a way to store program parts in multiple bookmarklets, possibly loaded with the assistance of a separate bookmarklet "bootloader", although this would be tedious. The alternative is to use the JS console.

In FIrefox, you can open a given script that you've stored on your computer by pressing Ctrl+O/Cmd+O, selecting the file as you would in any other program, and then pressing Enter. (Note that this means you might need to press Enter twice, since opening the file in question merely puts its contents into the console input and does not automatically execute it—sort of a hybrid clipboard thing.) I have not tested the limits of the console input for e.g. input size.

As far as I know, you can also use the JS console to get around the design of the dubious WebExtensions APIs—by ignoring them completely and going back to the old days and using XPCOM/Gecko "private" APIs. The way you do is is to open about:addons by pressing Ctrl+Shift+A (or whatever), opening or pasting the code you want to run, and then pressing Enter. This should I think give you access to all the old familiar Mozilla internals. Note, though, that all bookmarklet functionality is disabled on about:addons (not just affecting bookmarklets that would otherwise violate CSP by loading e.g. an external script or dumping an inline one on the page`).