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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.
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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?
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.
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
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.