Microsoft Bows to Eolas, Revamps IE 237
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."
Or... (Score:5, Insightful)
Power to the user? (Score:2, Insightful)
It sounds like this might break a few IE-based applications out there as well...
Better security (Score:5, Insightful)
That's what should happen anyway, stupid patent or no stupid patent. You shouldn't be able to go to a web page and have it run whatever it wants to on your computer. This won't protect against tricking the human, but it does raise the bar slightly for classic phishing popups, viruses and spyware.
I'd say Microsoft wised up a little, except that there are probably other ways to get IE to run ActiveX without user intervention.
Re:Or... What's at stake for the industry (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that's a great idea too. However I'm under impression there's a larger issue at stake which may affect more than just the IE ActiveX technology. Eolas stands to "adversely" affect other technologies with a court ruling in its favour. I'm not commenting on who is right or wrong. I don't have enough info. Maybe somebody else could comment futher on what else might be a stake besides Microsoft's ActiveX technology ...
Re:Uninformative blurb (Score:5, Insightful)
It appears no browser will be safe. Safari, Firefox, Opera, KHTML, etc. The 1995 article discusses applets, not ActiveX. This is precedent setting, and could have consequences for all browser plugins.
Workaround? (Score:5, Insightful)
What if someone were to write an ActiveX control that goes around and does all the clicking for other controls on the same page?
Does this actually do anything? (Score:4, Insightful)
I can't see a notable security benefit in this...
Re:Or... What's at stake for the industry (Score:5, Insightful)
Is my enemy's enemy my friend? I don't think so. If I chastise Microsoft for patenting software (which I do), then I can hardly endorse it in anyone else. When what you dislike is the weapons themselves, then it hardly matters who is using them on who.
Seems to be a poor decision... (Score:5, Insightful)
MS must be holding a really bad grudge at this point to go through all this trouble rather than licensing the patent.
Not just ActiveX (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Better security (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Or... (Score:2, Insightful)
The best that could be done is to change the behavior a bit each rev (Vista starts this by the way) to make it very hard to install ActiveX and eventually very hard to run it. Maybe in the OS after Blackcomb they can finally get rid of it.
Re:What this means for other browsers (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is they can. The problem is that I have not seen anything that proves beyond reasonable doubt that they will not. What would be such proof? Offering any GPL product the royalty free use of the patent. Offering the royalty free use of the patent to any browser that is available for non-windows platforms and updated regularly. The lawyers can hash out the language, but until there is more than an empty promis, suing MS is just a publicity stunt to win the support of the ignorant masses.
If Eolas intends to provide the patent to other browsers, they should do so in formal written manner. Until they do so, I can only assume that they are starting with MS for the big win, and then will pick everyone else off one by one.
Microsft protecting their own patents (Score:2, Insightful)
It is obvious to everyone that Eolas doesn't have a legitamate patent. But MS couldn't afford to beat them in court. If MS won, then it would illegitamize most of MS's patent portfolio of similarly bad patents.
Just a thought.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What this means for other browsers (Score:4, Insightful)
The GPL premble states this:
Where, presumably, "everyone" includes Microsoft. Granting some GPL-specific, Firefox-specific, or non-Windows-specific patent grant surely violates this intent.
Because of the GPL, Firefox will need to work-around the patent, even if Eolas is not specifically going after them.
Re:What this means for other browsers (Score:4, Insightful)
Take the second biggest browser competitor to Internet Explorer; Mozilla's Firefox. Firefox's developers are not (for the most part) incorporated, or in a lot of cases, even compensated for working on Firefox. So, when you go to sue, you can't sue Mozilla Firefox; you have to sue about a thousand individuals who released patches, or specifically pick off the ones that didn't modify the plugin code in any way. You're still looking at a law team just to find these invididuals, then you have to send them out, see what company they work for, and start legal proceedings with them.
Now, what's one of the largest Firefox supporters right now? Google. Does Eolas really want to unleash Google on them? Do no evil doesn't cover corporate takeovers for patent reasonings, I fear. While some people at Eolas would praise the giant buying them, I'm sure the laid off individuals would be quite pissed about it.
But, I only unleash one scenario, which just shows you how unlikely things would be that Eolas would dare. I could see them going after Apple, as they are a single corporate entity which is easier to attack, but if Apple plays the webcore defense, their up the same creek that they would be with Firefox; finding each individual, and suing them personally, or through the company that sponsored the development.
Eolas just stuck Microsoft with the bill because it was so easy; Microsoft can't afford to go to war anymore, and these are bad times for the big M. The euro hounds want them, the Justice department grumbles here and there, Google's ganging up on them, Apple's out dazzling them, open source companies are shooting up and grabbing capital all over, and on top of all of this, they decide to enter an entire new market which hates new hardware competitors (the gaming business).
Yes, it was opportunistic. But that's how you often have to be in the software world, and yes, that's how Microsoft rose to the top in the first place.
Re:Or... What's at stake for the industry (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What this means for other browsers (Score:3, Insightful)
No, wait, I do know where you got the idea -- it's the "Not Me!" defense plagiarized from Family Circle.
> Does Eolas really want to unleash Google on them?
You're aware they just successfully beat Microsoft, right?
EOLAS = Patent farm (Score:2, Insightful)
They are parasites feeding off the innovation of other companies. Folks, this does not just affect ActiveX but every other plug-in technology and applets.
There really should be an RICO-like law to prevent people from forming companies whose sole revenue source is through patents. They should be required to be actively producing something in the area they have patents in. This is nothing more than corporate racketeering.
Fine example of software patents worthlessness (Score:3, Insightful)
What does Eolas gain from its patent? Nothing.
What does the end user gain from this? Nothing, except hassle (OK, clicking a dialog box isn't much of a bother, but there isn't going to be the seemless integration of components that people have been used to).
Software patents are pathetic, especially pointless ones such as this.
If everybody agrees to create work-arounds - regardless of how much hassle it gives end-users - hopefully everybody will begin to loathe software patents, and will all join up to put an end to this pathetic excuse for the stifling of software progress and ease-of-use.
Re:Or... (Score:5, Insightful)
Besides, it's documented, there's multiple implementations, there's no patents that people are aware of -- just because Your Favorite Platform doesn't use it doesn't make it any less of an open standard.
Bullshit (Score:1, Insightful)
So if I am getting this right, Firefox et al won't require me to activate the UI controls even after i've installed a version of IE that does? Hopefully MS provides a way of returning said controls back to their old behavior instead of this new one.
Not to mention that in Europe, Microsoft no longer has control of programming whatever they please, they have to get the EU's governmental approval.
then don't spurn microsoft for patents, (Score:5, Insightful)
if I patent software and publically license it as beerware ad infinitium, do you chastise me for patenting?
We have to live within the system we have for now.. so- patent does not mean MUST be evil.. it can work two ways.
Re:Or... What's at stake for the industry (Score:5, Insightful)
IIRC - unlike some other companies out there *cough* IBM *cough*, Microsoft isn't really a big software patent litigator.
Re:Or... (Score:3, Insightful)
Why? It wasn't because I used Windows and was burned by the inherent insecurity of exposing the Window API to the internet.
No, it was because I have experienced too many websites which have used Active X controls to implement a simple menu which could have been handled with simple HTML and javascript, and would have worked with my browser. Windows only technology doesn't belong in a web page. If it has to be Windows only, then just make it a regular Windows application with network connectivity.
Re:Standards with moving goalposts (Score:3, Insightful)
(A) Replicating DCOM is actually quite difficult, even if you have all the specs, as the WINE people have learned.
(B) NIH factors have created 9 incompatible copies of COM (XPCOM, KParts, Bonobo, etc) because nobody had any foresight in the matter.
(C) Outside of web browsers, Open Source developers actually don't give a fuck about full standards support.
Re:Or... What's at stake for the industry (Score:3, Insightful)
That's a strange post. Sometimes vile weapons are used against vile people. I think an intelligent person can see shades of grey and see the good that comes out of use of patents sometimes.
IN this case if it hurts MS then it's good, if it makes it harder to hack IE then that's even better.
Well if you can accept that I'm intelligent and that I simultaneously hold a different point of view to you, then I'll happily explain my position.
I think software patents are wrong. Leaving aside the unresolved issue of whether it is ethical to patent mathematical algorithms, the immediate effect of allowing software patents is to close the market and stifle innovation. Just to clarify the difference between copyright and patents, copyright allows you to protect how you did something. Patents allow you to say no-one else can try. Nor can anyone else do something that follows on or builds on the patented idea. Nor does the idea necessarily even need to have been acted upon by the patent holder. Patents turn creativity into a territory that you need to pay for. That's a brief summation of why I do not like patents in software. I've kept it brief because I really only want to illustrate that my opposition to these is not based on which company holds them, but from first principles. They are wrong.
You say that anything that hurts Microsoft is good, but my dislike of Microsoft is not an a priori value, that doesn't need to be defended. I dislike Microsoft because of their business practices (including software patents). If I see another company take up those same business practices, then it doesn't matter to me if they turn those practices on each other. The net effect is more patents, and more reinforcement and embedding of the patent system. Time will pass and the settlements and companies involved will become irrelevent history, but the system which I object to has been made stronger and more patents claimed.
To put it another way, the deer doesn't take satisfaction in seeing that there are now two lions fighting over who gets to eat it. And the deer, in this metaphor, by the way. represents mankinds creativity.
Re:Standards with moving goalposts (Score:3, Insightful)
(b) Also true, to a certain extent.
(c) Bullshit. OpenDocument, SMTP, DNS (remember the Verisign debacle?), TCP/IP. We care about full standards support where information exchange is at issue. Sometimes it's just better to use steel studs instead of wood, even if the building codes mandate balsa wood.
Re:Standards with moving goalposts (Score:1, Insightful)
This is like the people who think that any DNS server that acts differently than BIND somehow breaks the standard.
Re:Uninformative blurb (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Or... What's at stake for the industry (Score:3, Insightful)
But that in turn hurts Microsoft. If their products become less streamlined than they were, they are less attractive for users.
Why is that a good thing? Are you suggesting that Open Source software cannot compete? That it depends on Microsoft being hamstrung by litigation?
The better Microsoft's products are, the better for their users and the better for Open Source that must raise its game. Unless you want Microsoft's users to suffer (and that's a large number of people some of which are bound to be innocent), or unless you want Open Source software to suffer a lack of competition, then let Microsoft do their best. The more they improve their products, the more the standard of software rises for all of us.
So long as we can fight off the patent system, that is.