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Eolas COO Says IE Changes A Shame
capt turnpike writes "Hot on the heels of Microsoft's announcement of a 60-day period in which Web developers will have to change their pages' architecture, the COO of Eolas, the company whose suit forced these changes, gives an interview to eWEEK.com in which he says these changes are a disappointment. Confused? From the article: 'There is no court order forcing Microsoft to do anything. Anything that is being done is of Microsoft's own choosing,' His position is that publicizing these forced changes strengthens MS's case."
From the point of view of his cash flow...
But Microsoft sure isn't going to pay Eolas for "licensing fees". Eolas is probably sad that MicroSoft has bought them outright.
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
the completely broken patent and copyright system in the U.S. that allows such ridiculous lawsuits to happen in the first place, which encourages companies like Microsoft to file thousands of "defensive" patents per year, exacerbating the problem. But nobody can figure out what stifles innovation....hmm.
Is making ActiveX harder to use a bad thing? "By Microsoft's own admission, IE users will only be able to interact with Microsoft ActiveX controls loaded in certain Web pages after manually activating their user interfaces by clicking on it or using the Tab and Enter keys."
What I read...
Why would they change? They should just pay us and our layers instead. If they don't pay, we may actually have to take a risk and develop something based on our patent or we will go broke. So yes America, and all that is reading our press release, Microsoft is bad, not us. Repeat that 10 times to as many people as you know and it will eventually become the truth.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
I'm seeing a lot of these comments side with Microsoft here, stating that Eolas is patent trolling. But, if Linux were to really take off, don't you think Microsoft would start filing a bunch of infringement lawsuits against Linux (or other F-OSS), in the same way Eolas did to Microsoft?
or "sham"?
There is no court order forcing Microsoft to do anything. Anything that is being done is of Microsoft's own choosing,'
You sued them, and apparently won, resulting in two paths of action for Microsoft. Stop the infringing activity, or pay you to be allowed to continue.
They indeed made a choice. Too bad it wasn't the one you wanted.
It seems like by taking this action, Microsoft is actually *reenforcing* the validity of software patents. Yes, bully to them for refusing to pay licensing, but by dropping the disputed technology, Microsoft is tacitly admitting that the patent is valid.
Of course that makes total sense, giving the MS is patenting software techniques left and right, and has reserved the right to sue Free Software distributors over it. If they can get e.g. RedHat to devote person-hours to removing patented algorithms from their distribution, then that's time and money that they're essentially forcing RedHat to throw out the window.
Causation can cause correlation
If every patent victim were to utter those words to the person or corporation attempting to shake them down, the incentive to perpetrate such frauds would be gone.
The problem is that corporations like Microsoft typically have a short-term mentality that tells them, "If we litigate, it will cost X. If we pay them off, it will cost Y." They then pay off the con artists if X > Y. Unfortunately this doesn't take into consideration the fact that this rewards bad behavior and leads to the paying of infinite more Ys in the future.
I applaud Microsoft's decision and I hope Eolas goes down in flames.
I'm a big tall mofo.
These changes sound a lot like a variant of Flashblock to me.
Yeah, that's right, these changes that "worsen the user experience" are almost identical to the functionality of a rather popular Firefox extension.
I consider requiring user input to run ActiveX controls to be a Good Thing. Thank you Eolas for finally forcing MS to make drive-by malware autoinstallation more difficult.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
What a coincidence! I'm dissapointed there aren't more Flash developers dying in horrible gardening accidents.
It isn't just the microsoft fee.
Since IE is (unfortunately) the defacto standard browser, others (if they infringe at all) will follow the lead, and Microsoft will take all the pain of getting web developers to change to cope with the changes.
The Eolas guy is annoyed because MS routed around his toll bridge, and now everyone else will see the way to go round too, and all his future revenues just evaporated.
Those of us out there who advocate Firefox should take this as a great opportunity.
I don't recommend jumping on that. You're going to be seen as forcing users to change. That strategy never works and always backfires. It will turn into, 'Eolas is forcing me to use Firefox because they are greedy'.
Eventually, this will erode any goodwill Firefox may gain. The webmasters will change their pages to work with IE, and the users will return to IE with a dislike for 'those greedy bastards who work with Firefox'.
The Slashdot crowd continues to underestimate Microsoft and misunderstand the market. The reaction to all of this is proof of that.
Quick question: what's more important ease of use or openess of code? (Watch people talk about how you can have both and how their pet project will bring this about.)
Simply put, the web is the biggest threat to Microsoft and they're continuing to neutralize it. This is the same type of smart move they made when they stopped shipping Java because "they were forced to". Consistent ubiquitous client-side technologies that aren't controlled by Microsoft are dangerous to them. This move is all about neutralizing Flash by stacking on some FUD.
"We don't need Flash!", I hear you all scream "We have Ajax!" --- think about it, what's the difference between Flash and a browser? Microsoft controls the browser. (And it's very very unlikely that that will change as long as Windows is the dominant OS.) They're going to continue to make enchancements and include bugs in their browser that will make it less productive to do cross-browser development and then provide tools and features for Windows only use that will sidetrack people doing standards based development.
The web development community is falling into the same trap that Microsoft used to win the first browser war.
Visit the puke's web site. They've trademarked the words "Invented Here".
(and no, I'm not going to link to it; it's obvious and it will prevent them from blocking referrals from Slashot)
Skivvy Niner? Email me!
HEY! Look left just ONE MORE TIME!
a version of the original open-source Mosaic with their embedded media plugin code. granted, that was before the term "Open Source" became vogue. Prior to that it was simply "well, is it GPL'ed or just BSD or MIT'ed?".
it got little attention outside the browser development world (Netscape 1.0 was out by then, and stealing the whole show), but it was demoed to Netscape and Sun in the lead-up to Java embedding in Netscape 2.0, so it is prior art to Java in the browser (and thus, flash, shockwave, and the whole ActiveX concept, much less Mozilla's plug-in architecture).
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
Would the license fees have been charged on a per copy basis? If so, how could Microsoft let people download IE for free (as in beer)?
Depends on what you're talking about. Cookies were invented to hold user information, reading that user information instead of asking for it again in order to sell something shouldn't be considered non-obvious in any way. Perhaps the only reason it's not obvious is because everyone else would add a confirmation before a sales contreact is established to prevent accidental orders.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Exactly my thoughts...if Amazon didn't invent cookies nor the mouse click, and we can presume the obviousness of the fact that 1 click to purchase is more desirable than multiple clicks, why should everyone else be forced to make their purchase process more complicated just because Amazon was able to get to the USPTO first? If someone borrows something from Amazon's particular implementation of the 1 click purchase, it is fair for a patent to protect them, but to patent 1 click is akin to patenting the idea of of a doorknob that only requires one hand and forcing all other doorknob makers to make knobs which require both hands to operate.
Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
I'm not a big fan of Microsoft -- but if a thief steals from an tyrant, that doesn't make the thief's transgression any less severe or more permissible.
Actually, as an act of aggression against the tyrant, it has some Robin-Hood like nobility, even if it's not given to the poor. No, this is a common brigand that simply shakes down anyone with a shilling only because the ones without aren't worth the effort.
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
Why isn't this made clear in any of the stories on this? It would certainly reduce the amount of hyperventilating.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.