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As part of a Free Software Foundation internship, developer Alyssa Rosenzweig has released a python3 script intended to allow users to make PayPal payments without using the proprietary ECMAScript normally associated with its usage. From the FSF's blog:
My third and final project was still more ambitious. As you may know from my work with Panfrost, the free software driver for modern Mali GPUs, I enjoy liberating critical proprietary software by decoding its internal protocols and reimplementing them in freedom. So, we looked around for latent proprietary software involved with FSF operations. Although we eat our own dog food, there was one proprietary system that could not be ignored: PayPal, which recently began requiring nonfree JavaScript. Pah. Enter Pagamigo. (In Calculus, this is formally known as a p-series.)
Pagamigo liberates the proprietary software required to donate to organizations like the FSF or the Debian Project via PayPal. Soon, the FSF Web pages that take online payments will include instructions for using Pagamigo.
Usage is straightforward, however your password may be stored in cleartext in your command history:
Use an online shop and opt to pay with Paypal. You will be redirected to a URL like:
https://www.sandbox.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_express-checkout&token=EC-CAFEBABE123456789
Copy that URL to your clipboard. Then, from the command line run:
$ pagamigo redirect
Follow the directions on-screen prompting you to enter your PayPal credentials and to paste this URL.
...
For peer-to-peer money transfer ("Send money"), instead use:
$ pagamigo send-money
Pagamigo, while interactive by default, is entirely configurable by arguments as well. For instance:
$ pagamigo send-money --to sunset@chs.eq --amount 10.00 --username scitwi@chs.earth --password hunter2 --debug
While many people dislike PayPal for numerous reasons, it is ubiquitous and has few stable alternatives. This should at least allow the anti-ECMAScript and FOSS crowds a less-compromised option. Perhaps a SoylentNews subscription?
(Score: 2) by Rich on Saturday November 10 2018, @03:09AM
Hopefully that won't be a case for the follow-up article "The ‘Kill Zone’ for Industry Upstarts". Her work on Panfrost is outstanding and if completed would be the missing puzzle piece in getting an entirely libre-software computer suitable for everyday use, without backdoors. The RK3399 just barely fits the bill, with the worst limitation being 4GB of RAM, but if you relocate web surfing to an online service, or resort to some clustering, it would work. Work as in "the man", turning white faced: "who forgot to tell Rockchip they must enforce TrustZone booting with our blob on that chip?" It's just the bloody drivers for the ARM sourced GPU missing. And the FSF lets her do menial or entirely unrelated tasks like updating a web site about single-board computers or maintaining some maintenance tool. Nearly as delusional as the Stallman call for the community to improve emacs so it can be easily used by a wide audience. And now she wastes time on a private payment API that can easily be made proprietary again with the addition of one little sentence of legalese to the terms, one little code change to check for the client, and one big crackdown to tell every pretentious sucker out there to not mess with them.
Get Panfrost finished! Pretty please. With a cherry on top. :)