Slashdot Mirror
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."
They could perhaps just remove ActiveX entirely, insecure as it has proven to be.
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.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
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 ...
Here's an article from 1995 (Yeah, pdf sucks, but it's very telling about what's going on)
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.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
If I understand Microsoft's writeup correctly, ActiveX controls will still load without user intervention, but will require an additional click to begin accepting user input the first time.
What if someone were to write an ActiveX control that goes around and does all the clicking for other controls on the same page?
I can't see a notable security benefit in this...
-- Sig down
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.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
MS must be holding a really bad grudge at this point to go through all this trouble rather than licensing the patent.
Why are so many people acting like this is somehow some great strike against ActiveX? Aside from the fact that ActiveX controls will still run (you just have to click an extra time to interact with their UI), keep in mind that this applies to ANYTHING loaded with APPLET, EMBED, or OBJECT tags. That includes Java applets for sure (which are protected by the sandbox). It very well might also include Flash, SVG, etc. As I understand it, this covers basically any high-interactivity component of any web page, on any platform, with any browser if affected. This is just Microsoft's solution to the problem. Other browsers will need to come up with solutions as well.
-James
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.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
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.
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
While I agree with you on the main point (Eolas doesn't have the nuts to go after other browsers), it's for a totally different reason.
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.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
No matter how much you hate the weapons, it's still pretty sweet to see their greatest proponent taste its own bitter medicine, though. ;)
spurn them for their individual USE of patents/enforcement/licensing terms.
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.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Taste of their own medicine? huh?
IIRC - unlike some other companies out there *cough* IBM *cough*, Microsoft isn't really a big software patent litigator.
You act like "FOSS" has some sort of central brain or something. The truth is:
(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.
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.