As suggested by RMS in The JavaScript Trap:
<https://gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html>
This does increase the size of the minified file a bit---the header is now
about 1kB of uncompressed text (which will hopefully comprses nicely with
the rest of the minified file). That said, ease.js will be continuing to
grow in size, bandwidth is becoming less and less important, and the license
is very important, especially in our goal to spread the philosophy of
software freedom.
This project was originally LGPLv+-licensed to encourage its use in a community
that is largely copyleft-phobic. After further reflection, that was a mistake,
as adoption is not the important factor here---software freedom is.
When submitting ease.js to the GNU project, it was asked if I would be willing
to relicense it under the GPLv3+; I agreed happily, because there is no reason
why we should provide proprietary software any sort of edge. Indeed, proprietary
JavaScript is a huge problem since it is automatically downloaded on the user's
PC generally without them even knowing, and is a current focus for the FSF. As
such, to remain firm in our stance against proprietary JavaScript, relicensing
made the most sense for GNU.
This is likely to upset current users of ease.js. I am not sure of their
number---I have only seen download counts periodically on npmjs.org---but I know
there are at least a small number. These users are free to continue using the
previous LGPL'd releases, but with the understanding that there will be no
further maintenance (not even bug fixes). If possible, users should use the
GPL-licensed versions and release their software as free software.
Here comes GNU ease.js.
Mike Gerwitz
Mike Gerwitz