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Microsoft Plans IE Changes Due to Plugin Patent
aWalrus writes "Microsoft has outlined some of the strategies they may pursue for modifying the way Internet Explorer handles plugins (annoying the user may circumvent the patent) if they lose their legal battle against Eolas Technologies (which claims they invented the seamless procedure for running plugins). There has already been a previous ruling against MS which they continue to appeal. This is likely to have repercussions in the Open Source Community too. If MS is found to be infringing the patent, that ruling could be extended to other browsers like Opera and Mozilla. Usability expert Jeffrey Zeldman provides an in-depth commentary on this issue and its implications."
I beilive the $521 Mil is the court ruling (i.e. damage and punitave costs). They would still have to licence the patent for any ongoing use above and beyond the $521. Assuming they lose all their appeals they're going to be paying that regardless of what they end up doing with IE.
This also applies to embedded media (movies) and applets, apparently. Basically, the foundation for most complex Web Applications client interface implemented in the browser may be infringing on this patent.
Overcaffeinated. Angry geeks.
Ah - I think you missed the point.
Microsoft has to pay $521 million for violations of the patent - they used the technology without getting a license first. It's a penalty. It does NOT give them a licence to use this patented technology.
To KEEP using the technology - they'll have to get a licence from Eolas. That's a separate negotiation - and Eolas can name any figure they want - $1, $100 billion, or even "Nope, sorry - you can't use this technology Microsoft no matter how much money you throw at us."
There's an interesting article by Cringley where he talks to the CEO I believe of Eolas. Check it out here
seamless every time you want to *use* it, not install it. The patent doesn't cover installation.
... 'click OK to non-seamlessly display "herbal viagra for u" ? '
So, you'll start to see a dialog box every time a flash/pdf/java applet wants to display itself. Before you think that is a good thing - think about every advert popping up a dialog box with just the OK button
while, this would help for the "lowest common denominator" of web browsing...there's still a lot of things that Java and Flash can do that HTML/Javascript just weren't meant to do...and for that matter shouldn't be attempted. the "real-time" interactivity that Flash provides in MX (with flash remoting) is really nice, and doesn't look as kludgy as the java applet alternative.
Just to correct you for others so if someone reading this hasen't gotten Flash working...
/usr/lib/mozilla, but if mozilla was installed via RPM most likely the plugin directory is (for version 1.4) /usr/lib/mozilla-1.4/plugin ;-)
The installer 'suggests' the mozilla directory is in
I know this drove me nuts for a while also
"Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson
According to the CNet article, 25% of the settlement will go to the University of California. Since this University receives public funding, they aren't legally allowed to do this under California statutes. Specifically, while they can copyright some things, they also have to license these patents for public use, free of charge. This law exists in most states to make sure that universities receiving public funding continue to work in the interests of the public. If Microsoft loses, expect the University of California to get hammered by Microsoft in a seperate lawsuit over this.
"They did loose the antitrust case did they not ?"
:]
No, MS won the antitrust case. All the government did was find MS guilty.
I agree in part. The only thing I would miss if flash died would be some webcomics, but I'm sure their authors would just use gifs or pngs. At the moment this simple mozilla extension is the bane of flash advertising.
"The number of Unix installations has grown to ten, with more expected." (Unix Programmer's Manual, 2nd ed.; june 1972)
As Eli Whitney noted when the cotton gin was put into production by copycats before he'd even finished demoing the prototype:
"Some ideas are too valuable to be owned."
He never filed another patent.
Some ideas are too valuable to the community to be owned, but essentially worthless in terms of license sales. Eola's patent is one of these.
They may get some money for violations of their patent rights, but then the money train parks in the engine house and stays there. Companies will simply work around the patent until it expires. Users who wish the funcitionality in their browsers will simply use older versions released before the "embargo."
And forever afterward Eolas will be know as "those assholes" who made the whole mess happen. Way to go guys. I'm sure your PR flacks are happy as clams.
KFG
The article you are thinking of is here:
0 7. html
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit200211
It's well worth a read, as it becomes apparent that maybe Eolas doesn't want to stop *everybody* from using the technology, or squeeze cash out of them.
In terms of Open Source involvement, Mike Doyle is actually a respected member of the Tcl comunity.
http://www.welton.it/davidw/
listed here.
Who would have thought the organization behind BSD would screw software developers the world over in this fashion?
Bill Joy is rolling in his grave now.
Here's a few MSFT software patents.
Bill Gates started out very critical of software patentability, but now that microsoft are the dominant monopoly rather than the darling new industry players, he's switched sides. Patents are, and have always been, a way for industry incumbents to fight upstarts. The "rewarding inventors" line has always been pure propaganda - for every inventor they reward, many are crushed. That's why one of the first things Americans did when leaving the British Empire was stop honouring British patents.
That said, IBM are the largest software patenters, not microsoft.
No, copyright is not patent, but Microsoft holds both.
Choice of masters is not freedom.
Even if you filed a patent application years earlier, you can't sue on a patent until the application is approved and the patent actually issues (is published). The patent issued in 11/98. They sued in 2/99.
It's from the stage play "A Man for All Seasons", which is about Sir Thomas More, a lawyer and intellectual of the 15th-16th centuries.
There have also been several movies made of it, including the Oscar-winning classic (recommended), and also a reasonably good TV movie starring Charlton Heston.
DNA just wants to be free...
Not so. The 521 million covers past use only, if MS doesn't license the patent and continues to use it, it is really easy to get an injunction from court preventing MS from shipping anything that violates the patent. Since IE is now a part of Windows, that means that no computers can be bought or sold until Microsoft either removed IE from windows, or removed the infrining parts from IE.
It could be worse though. In some patent cases the company has been forced to recall and refund all past customers. When I was a kid Kodak bought back all their Instant cameras after losing a patent case.
When Roper says that he'd cut down every law in Englend, he's actually being disobedient to God's law. So while this particular quote from the play indicts the common misperception of Christianity, real Christianity supports the same behavior More upholds.
NOTE: The above Bible passage is often misinterpreted to suggest that it empowers tyrants, etc. For example, some would say that the citizens of Nazi Germany were required, by the Bible, to support Nazi-ism. But that ignores a rather large, and obvious fact of life: Just because God ordains a person to a position, does not prevent that person from abusing their position or using their position improperly. God does not condone any authority that contradicts His own. So if you are trying to determine whether or not you should obey man's authority, the answer is yes, unless it contradicts God's laws as described in the Bible. If you're confused as to what those are, here's a good start.
$.02.
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
Most universities and large business sift through the fruits of their employees' work and look for intellectual property that can be patented and possibly licensed or traded like any other property of real value. It helps them cover their investment (capitalism, and all that stuff). Heck, I found out a couple of months ago that I am the holder of two patents that had been filed by an old, old employer. You can be a patent holder and not even know it. Most of us sign something when hired by a company assigning the company exclusive license to intellectual property developed there in the course of one's work.
Having actually done some research on this Eolas patent and how it relates to the Microsoft judgement, I found out some interesting stuff that should be considered before we all condemn this in a knee-jerk response to the infringement this places on our freedom to develop software.
A few guys were working at the University of California and developed a plugin technology with the old NSCA Mosaic browser that allowed a server to ship executable content down the line along with the HTML and then have the browser do things it couldn't do before. Routinely, a patent application was filed by their employer on this work. The guys who did the work thought that this was neat technology and worked a deal with the University that they could try to maybe get this technology out into the wider world, and so, as there was a patent filed on it already, they worked an exclusive licensing agreement with the University.
So these guys form a company and start making calls on the big players in the Internet technology world at the time. They visit Microsoft, demonstrate this plug-in technology and the cool things that it would allow a browser to do, and received a big yawn and sent on their way with a "don't call us, we'll call you" sort of brush-off. They call on a number of other Silicon Valley companies, but these guys aren't businessmen, they're academics. They don't know how the commercial IP game is played. The end result is a lot of people in a lot of companies was this technology and took a pass on licensing it into their own products (which most probably would have been very, very cheap to do back then).
Time passes. These same companies start enhancing browsers with their own plug-in technologies for executable content. No action is taken initially by these guys. Finally, Microsoft starts to dominate Netscape. Attempts are made to reopen discussions by these guys and are rebuffed. These guys start involving lawyers to try to get Microsoft's attention. These attempts are rebuffed too. Finally, they file suit against Microsoft for patent infringement. Many years pass as Microsoft makes motion after motion in hearing after hearing to have the suit dismissed and each time, fails. But they achieve one of their goals which is to delay the proceedings significantly. Meanwhile, the Internet bubble comes and goes. There are many products that now do this plug-in sort of thing. The idea becomes obvious because everyone sees it going on around them in other products. Finally, the patent infringment suit against Microsoft goes to trial. After many weeks of trial in which mountains of evidence are presented by Microsoft, twelve regular joes on the jury aren't convinced that there was (1) prior art or prior effort on Microsoft's part, (2) lack of knowledge by Microsoft about the invention or patent (2) or an invalid patent granted to the University of California.
The Federal jury trial found for Eolas and against Microsoft on all counts. Apparently the evidence was so strong that jury deliberations took just one day. You can say what you want about jury trials, but having seen what judges have done, or not done, when the decision is theirs alone [when Microsoft was found gui
No, Opera is not based on Mozilla in any way. The Opera source code is completely separate from any other browser and is closed source.
Additionally, the Mozilla browser is now being developed by the Mozilla Foundation, not by Netscape.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Then you haven't been looking hard enough. A lot of apps export to SVG, with corel's latest offering being an example. You might want to google for slashdot articles on SVG for more example, instead of embaressing yourself in a public forum.
Remember "out of sight, out of mind" doesn't equal "doesn't exist".
Their XML handler chokes on the slightest syntax error, fails to show any of the text, and thus gives a big middle finger to any poor schmuck trying to debug his XML generator
You do know that going south at the first error is actually part of the XML spec ? That it was and still is one of the strongest XML selling points ?
People tried to do forgiving markup parsing for years before. It didn't work - errors just accumulate till the breaking point (and then you're in trouble).
In their great wisdom XML specifiers decided against repeating past mistakes, forcing everyone to write clean code by forbidding parsers that overlook markup errors.
And the world rejoiced. SGML/HTML soup was dead.
No large patent holder has to actually do this. IBM holds the most patents and they said in their "Think" magazine that they get 10X the value from cross-licensing that they do from licensing patents. Considering suing for infringement involves spending money, not necessarily making money, it stands to reason that cross-licensing would still be far more valuable than winning patent infringement lawsuits too.
Also, consider the scare factor.
RMS happened to browse the weekly patent column in the New York Times when he came across a listing for a patent that appeared to cover a data compression method that the GNU project was going to use in a compressor they were about to release. That patent, and the implicit threat of losing an infringement lawsuit, killed this program before it was released. Nobody had to sue the FSF to get this result. Later the GNU project released gzip which went on to become a defacto standard, but it would have been nice if we could compete (as you say) "on actually making and selling software" instead of locking up ideas in an artificial economy so as to kill competition before it has a chance to benefit the end-user. RMS describes the experience and explodes the myth of patents benefitting software developers in his talk (or if you prefer, read the transcript).
Bill Gates once said:Patents push people into an arms race of sorts--as Gates obliquely illustrates, the patent system makes people react out of fear, not what's in the best interests of community or consumers. By creating this system and issuing software patents, the US Government has abdicated any desire to allow consumers to benefit by picking from a healthy competitive marketplace. After hearing what RMS has to say, I don't see how anyone can come away thinking those who don't sue for infringement are substantially better than those who do.
Digital Citizen
Well, don't hold me to it, but I seem to recall that this patent did have a fair amount of prior art associated with it, but the judge disallowed it because MS didn't raise the point during the patent application period. Apparently allowing a prior art discussion is at the discresion of the judge.
I'm not shy, I'm stalking my prey
Plugins. Mozilla. Plugins. MIME Handling. oh and XML.
Great topics, all of them.
I'm sorry that a plugin manager has been promised for mozilla for years. and i'm sorry that mozilla/1 actually had a manager that worked well. and i'm sorry that ie for mac has a plugin manager that works.
at the risk of making a bad prediction i think a plugin manager for mozilla might happen w/in 12 months. i've heard rumors firebird even has one although i suspect it doesn't do everything i want.
i'm hoping that mozilla/5 will eventually get an interface similar to mozilla/3, which lets you specify to use a helper application instead of a plugin (it's a bit odd prompt user maps to using a plugin, save to disk and launch the application do what you'd expect - the mozilla/5 interface shouldn't have this quirk).
Yes it's possible to make mozilla/1 through mozilla/3 run notepad or mozilla/5 for things like text/plain and text/html.
Is it a bit strange? maybe.
XML handling.
This is what my mozilla nightly (9/10-04) gives:
XML Parsing Error: no element found
Location: data:text/xml,<Foo>
Line Number 1, Column 6:
<Foo>
-----^
It's right. and as someone already said if mozilla is asked to process the xml it's required to do the error parsing. At least for the data url view source gave me the correct content, so I don't see a real problem with mozilla's behavior.
Should you be able to do something else? probably. i'd want at least to be able to specify a handler as with the other types just as mozilla/1..3 do for their supported types. How long off is this? probably 12months.
Should you be able to drag the orignal xml content to something else (if your mozilla platform's toolkit supports DnD)? yes. maybe i'll work on this.
This patent is not (yet) valid in the EU.
And I hope it never will...!
Even though WIPO is evil, it is not yet linked to software patents. The EU does not have them (yet).
This Zeldman guy doesn't seem like much of a usability/accessibility guru if his web site refuses to let me enlarge the font to something legible, not to mention improve the contrast.
You must be using Internet Explorer for Windows - the only browser I can find that doesn't allow you to change the text size. Not his fault your browser sucks.
As for the contrast, in Mozilla, go to View/Use Style/highcontrast - Mr. Zeldman has created alternate stylesheets for you, if you don't like his default. Most browsers don't support this feature yet, but it's there.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;