Microsoft Bows to Eolas, Revamps IE

Tenacious Dee writes "The patent quarrel between Microsoft and Eolas takes a strange turn with an announcement from Redmond that the Internet Explorer browser will be modified to change the way ActiveX controls are handled. A Microsoft white paper details the behavior change."

Re:Uninformative blurb

[n0dalus]

You can see the Patent Here [uspto.gov].

Essentially, it's a total bullshit patent attempting to own the concept of having an interactive server/client style application embedded in a webpage.

Re:Extra click to interact with objects in pages.

[IntlHarvester]

No, it's not like Flashblock. The article indicates that flash movies will play as they normally do. Only that if you want to click the "Stop" button, you will actually have to click it twice - once to activate the control and a second time to click the button. Dumbdumbdumbdumbdumb.

Furthermore, the webdev can bypass this stupidity using some simple javascript to write out the tags.

Note also that Firefox and other browsers will need to implement a similar change.

Re:What this means for other browsers

[PlayfullyClever]

Will eolas go for other browsers?

Probably Not! (Here's why).
The general trick if you are going for maximum profit is to first sue a small company, and get a successful precident. It costs you less to fight the action against a smaller company, and improves your chances of getting the really big money later by giving you some already recorded findings that the court will generally accept and not let your opponent delay over. Taking on Opera (for example), first, and Microsoft second or later makes more sense if it's all about the cash.

For a publicly traded company, this is even more plausable. Winning a small decision that seems to forshadow a bigger win can really drive up the price of stock without costing much at all to implement.

The chief reason people are concerned that this lawsuit might be the first of a series is probably SCO's lawsuits. After all, SCO avoided going after smaller fry first and went for IBM. However: 1. That doesn't seem to be working too well, and other companies are at least as likely on observing it to avoid the strategy as imitate it. 2. There's no indicators that Eolas has been secretly coached in this strategy, backed by (say) the veiled resources of the powerful Lynx Megacorporation in an attempt to regain browser dominance for Eolas's hidden puppeteer.

Re:Does this actually do anything?

[spideyct]

What makes you think security benefit was one of the goals? Its about changing the current implementation so that it no longer violates a patent.

Re:Or...

[IntlHarvester]

I knew someone would turn this into a flamefest about ActiveX.

Allow me to make a technical point on slashdot -- ActiveX is nothing more than an interface standard. It's neither "secure" or "insecure" by itself. As it is used in IE it's no less secure than any other browser plugin mechanism, including those found in Firefox or Safari.

The technology you dislike is not ActiveX -- it's called Internet Component Download [microsoft.com]. And while it still exists, it's pretty limited in XPSP2, and there's been some rumblings that it will be removed alltogether in Vista.

XHTML 2?

[rollercoaster375]

How does IE plan to support XHTML 2.0 if the is going to require a click to be viewed?

For those less-informed about XHTML 2, will be replacing

Re:Better security

[smallpaul]

You're totally misunderstanding the proposal. It isn't that the ActiveX will cease automatically running. It is that after they are running, the user will need to "activate them" with a mouse click before working with them. If you want to stop a movie playing, you'd have to click once to activate it and again to stop it.

Thank You Microsoft, W3C

[theodp]

Microsoft and the W3C's decision to shut out the public [slashdot.org] on the Eolas patent reexam looks worse than ever, eh?

Re:Or...

[spectral]

The entire world? No. The entire windows operating system? pretty much. MFC extensively uses ActiveX/COM controls, whether you realize it or not. VB? ActiveX/COM drives half of the VB interfaces you see (unless it's vb.net, in which case it might only be 1/4th.) Have you ever embedded something in an office document? That's an ActiveX/COM control right there. (Their solution to this Eolas patent essentially causes it to treat ActiveX like a COM control behaves in Office: click to activate [though, without the offscreen/wmf render that Office uses, since this visual interface is still updateable, just not interactable].. this annoyance plagues me daily at work)

Windows uses COM/OLE/ActiveX (and separating one from the other gets somewhat difficult at times) EXTENSIVELY. It's just like KDE and KParts. Yes, just remove the entire KParts foundation architecture, and see how well KDE works.

Re:What this means for other browsers

[tricorn]

It would be licensed for everyone's free use - when used in a GPL program. All Microsoft would have to do would be to GPL Explorer.

I agree, however, that this patent should never have been granted. The fact that Microsoft can work around it in this ridiculous manner shows how stupid the patent actually is. If what Microsoft is doing ISN'T patented, it should be "obvious" that requiring "activating" a control (and ONLY for the purpose of it being interactive), or that loading a control by referencing an "external script", is an unnecessary step, and any sane person would simply look at that and say "hey, let's cut out that step".

Now, that's assuming that Microsoft's lawyers looked at the patent, and the court ruling, very VERY closely to figure out exactly what they had to disable in order to not fall under the patent. I almost think that the description of how they're working around the patent is a perfect indication of how broken the patent system currently is, and should be presented to Congress so they can fix it (along with the Blackberry patent and the harm that is doing). Patents are supposed to ENCOURAGE innovation, not stifle it (regardless of what you or I may think of ActiveX).

Re:What this means for other browsers

[marcosdumay]

Well, Eolas will not probably go against another browser. That is not news, they alread claimed to go against Microsoft because M$ stoled their idea, M$ listened to the presentation and refused to license the patent. Then, M$ implemented the same idea.

But this is not important. What you seem to be ignoring is that they are setling. The patent didn't went through the full process of being accepted on a court. If Eolas goes agaisnt someone else with this patent, they'll be on the same situation that if he never sued M$.

Not to say that the best outcome would be the patent not surviving, but it wasn't accepted either, what is not bad.

Get out of that cave on mars

[Aqws]

This isn't much of a problem to people that don't use IE.
It seems that this patent won't be a threat to other browsers. Here's why: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/03/05/eolas_web_ patent_nullified/ [theregister.co.uk]

Re:What this means for other browsers

[Savantissimo]

It wasn't easy - it's been in the courts for many years. Microsoft was offered a good deal early on but decided that they could get away with just using the patent without paying at all. They counted on their legal machine being able to crush tiny Eolas regardless of the merits of the case. Eolas is just one guy, Mike Doyle. He invented this technology legitimately, albeit about a month or two before other people. Nevertheless, if you read the patent carefully the details aren't really obvious. The patent and the legal issues around it are more complex than reports have indicated, and the alleged prior art differs in significant ways from the patent. Also, this isn't the only or most important thing Mike was the first to do - in the '80s he was the first person to create a networked hypertext system with the links stored in the content pages themselves rather than in a seperate central database. This was a much more fundamental technological and conceptual advance than the derivative implentation of hypertext by Tim Berners-Lee, HTML. So I look at this as a rare case of a lone innovator actually getting a shot at the big bucks that corporations take as their due. Software patents are the problem, not Eolas, and as long as the system is as it is, the best than one can hope is that actual inventors will see some royalties.

Re:EOLAS = Patent farm

[Savantissimo]

You are totally off base. see my earlier post: http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=170066&cid =14174958 [slashdot.org]

The patent is very, very specific and Mike Doyle actually built the software covered by the patent before filing the patent. His employer, a university, holds the patent for his invention. He then founded Eolas and licensed the patent back from his employer. Also, this is not the only big thing Mike Doyle invented, just the only one he tried to get paid for. Your idea of ending patents for inventors who don't have the ability to manufacture their inventions themselves is something the big companies would push hard for if there were any chance of it happening.

Re:Uninformative blurb

[Rits]

If they want to do business in the USA, they can't avoid this issue. They use US mirrors to offer downloads. Also, Opera has deals with Motorola and Adobe, American companies... Though for mobile or embedded browsers, which Opera delivers to these companies, it might be easier to avoid this particular patent.

Re:What this means for other browsers

[Tim C]

So, when you go to sue, you can't sue Mozilla Firefox

You sue the Mozilla Foundation. From the about page [mozilla.org]:

"the Mozilla Foundation exists to provide organizational, legal, and financial support for the Mozilla open-source software project. The Foundation has been incorporated as a California not-for-profit corporation to ensure that the Mozilla project continues to exist beyond the participation of individual volunteers, to enable contributions of intellectual property and funds and to provide a vehicle for limiting legal exposure while participating in open-source software projects."

The Mozilla Foundation is incorporated, and exists in part to handle this exact eventuality. If you want to go after Firefox, that's who you sue.