About view-source:

view-source: is dedicated to the democratic promise of the open web.¶

why view-source:?¶

In almost every web browser, you can prepend view-source: to the URL to see the source code of the page you are on.

For many of us, it isn't an exaggeration to say this was a life-changing feature of the early web— a gateway into understanding how things worked that led to a lifetime of making things.

Though the feature is still present, things have changed a bit:

When you did “View Source” in the early days of the web, it’s very likely you were literally viewing the source code as authored by the webmaster. Now-a-days, however, the “source” you view was likely the result of some tooling stitching together content and markup through a series of templates then munging/minifying it for delivery over the network. While viewing that machine-generated source is still useful in many cases, if we’re talking about “View Source” being a “how-to” guide on programming for the web, it’s only a piece of the puzzle.

-Jim Nielsen, The Spirit of View Source

This change mirrors larger threats facing the web today. Unnecessary complexity favors the largest players, who have money, resources, and bandwidth to spare.

Engineers who care about the open culture of the web should recognize that the threats to that culture come not only from Digital Enclosure by large, private companies of the most important pieces of the web.

They should also recognize the risks of Technical Enclosure, and the non-technical value of the #ViewSource affordance in perpetuating the open culture of web development [...]

-Carson Gross, creator of HTMX, in The #ViewSource Affordance.

This complexity also comes at a social cost. When most people cannot understand the technologies that shape their lives, it makes it easier for those that do to consolidate power. It is impossible to live in the world today and not feel the impact of this consolidation. The heads of the companies that benefited from and then undermined the openness of the early web are now the wealthiest and most powerful people alive.

view-source values¶

These values are still evolving; contribute.

The open web is essential to a healthy world.

Platform decay and corporate capture have twisted the web from something with untold potential for democratization to a tool of surveillance and control. A shift back towards open platforms is overdue and critical. The billionaires' web is incapable of ushering in meaningful change. The web could be the most powerful means we have to organize on a global scale against climate disaster and tyranny, if we can keep it.

AKA "If democracy dies on the web it dies in real life."

Technology should strive to be understandable.

Deliberately or negligently opaque technologies obfuscate harm and allow the select few "in the know" to leverage them against the rest of us. We should seek simple and maintainable solutions to problems, not introduce unnecessary complexity or chase trends. This is both good engineering and a way to decouple software from the wasteful and unnecessary perpetual upgrade cycle that commercial software has accustomed us to.

Technology must be humane.

We should judge technological solutions by the improvements they make to the human condition. Uses of technology that actively worsen life— such as those primarily serving to extract wealth, cultivate addiction, or foster hatred— have no place.

Collaboration without exploitation.

Corporations exploiting the Open Source & Free Software movements is as old as the movements themselves. Entire business models have been built on the free labor of these movements in what has already become a lopsided deal for independent developers. Now, the widespread adoption of LLMs poses an existential risk to the ideals of free software, offering the means to launder open source code without attribution— often the one thing authors ask.

It has become clear that rethinking this relationship is overdue.

talk to us¶

This is a growing community project. If you would like to contribute or have suggestions for new content, get in touch.