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Date:      Sun, 25 Dec 2022 11:23:23 -0700
From:      Bob Proulx <bob@proulx.com>
To:        questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Slight OT: Making Firefox behave the same on FreeBSD and windows
Message-ID:  <20221225110429895202411@bob.proulx.com>
In-Reply-To: <6198A5D4-A3CA-4D59-8947-884EE5D7F874@nimnet.asn.au>
References:  <CAGBxaXkaVUMvoAqWW3P_N5%2BShB32g2v45PuuGKG7cmrjhON9BA@mail.gmail.com> <alpine.BSF.2.20.2212222228460.29820@tripel.monochrome.org> <CABObuOr-KcMX60xVRa4FVmCzZE7ZaR_k_C4k=gb34EB34jBGsg@mail.gmail.com> <20221223120153244758626@bob.proulx.com> <CAN6yY1tULz2-rwZfnpCw%2B0vSC74YDp3b5G1_TkV8jK4uceaNMQ@mail.gmail.com> <20221224112249N@bob.proulx.com> <CAGBxaXmiD-AAg5sNhT7pRi5wYeJk15W9xzV3k2mj0pLPPPbhyQ@mail.gmail.com> <6198A5D4-A3CA-4D59-8947-884EE5D7F874@nimnet.asn.au>

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Ian Smith wrote:
> Aryeh Friedman wrote:
> > It seems like there are enough people with this issue that if we
> > complain collectively (petition?) to chase that they might fix the
> > problem on their end.    Now the question is this a framework issue
> > for them and if so who made the framework (i.e. so other sites work
> > also) and we should complain to them.
>
> I think you've mis-parsed the issue, which is that some corporations
> seek to exclude use by their clients of products of other than those
> who fit their BigCorp image.

I think the problem is reversed.  No way to know without knowing and I
do not know but I will GUESS here that they are not excluding FreeBSD.
I will guess that they are including *only* Windows and other known
things there and just haven't enumerated the world.  Because it is
hard to enumerate all things.

Pseudocode for my guess at the way it is working.

    if $system in (Windows|Macintosh|Android|Linux) then
        echo "Okay.  Systems we accept."
    else
        echo "Are you a bot?  Deny all unknowns."

I doubt they are excluding FreeBSD in particular.  I would guess that
if their code base were grep'd for FreeBSD they would not find any
matches.  It's just not being included.  Along with many others.

I think someone wanted to keep Googlebot out of the login page and
thought it was a good idea to allow only known non-bot things and
probably started with Windows and then added in Macintosh and then
probably added in Android as being forgotten and then one of the
developers also used Linux so that got added into the list.  And I'll
add to say thankfully that developer used Linux because otherwise we
would not have even that one in the allowed list.

That's my guess at how this will have arrived at this point.  And
probably all in a misguided attempt to keep bots like Googlebot and
Yandex and other web crawlers out of their login page.

Bob



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