Slashdot Mirror
AOL Patent Deal Means Microsoft Now Holds Vestiges of Netscape
inode_buddha writes "It's part of the $1 billion AOL patent deal, and it's something that would have made many minds explode back in the 1990s. It still makes my mind explode today. Marc Andreesen points out that MS now has a significant chunk of the old Netscape. What are the ramifications for Mozilla?"
Nothing.
Or, if Microsoft is stupid, they'll leverage the patents against other browsers and open up a nice new series of anti-competition complaints. But as we've seen over the last 10 years, MS has gotten very, very careful about not treading into areas that could open up a new round of such suits, and very subtle in their anti-competitive behavior so as not to draw attention from the DoJ.
I'm sure MS would love to lock out all browsers but IE from Windows 8, like Apple can on iOS, but MS burned themselves there before. I'm sure they'd love to lock out the ability for users to boot non-Windows platforms on x86 PCs, like they do on ARM. But that too would draw an unending stream of complaints (though I think the ARM lock out should as well, against all vendors.)
The question to be asked is how MS will use these patents to raise fees on Android, and if they'll go around demanding more "Linux licenses" like they did in 2007.
>> Marc Andreesen points out that MS now has a significant chunk of the old Netscape. What are the ramifications for Mozilla?
Not sure how much those patents would be worth to anyone, given that Netscape was unable to use them to defend against IE in the 1990s.
Does this mean that some hybrid of IE/Netscrape will be created? That could be either very interesting or very scary.
Netscape 7 (or was it 8) could already use the Trident rendering engine on Windows, the same engine that powers Internet Explorer. It was a runtime user option, and could be switched on the fly.
Lock the wife and the dog in the boot of the car.
Return one hour later.
Who's happy to see you?
NetSoft InternetEscaper? Netcraft MicroScapeExplorer? MicroCape NetExCavator? A strange marriage, this on... I'll just stick to using FireFox, thank you...
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
if you can't beat them, buy them
Beat them and buy them.
Dark Reflection
It's very pathetic what the world has come to. Big corporations now rely on suing each other to make profits.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
I hate software patents with all of my being, because I believe that they are equivalent to patenting mental steps (which supposedly cannot be patented, but even worse, effectively legislates what sort of ideas a person is allowed to think about or share with others). To that end, I'm curious what sort of repercussions there would actually be if they were simply dissolved. Would it cause, as advocates of software patents would tend to believe, a stifling of innovation, because companies with the money to do some cutting edge R&D would be less likely to invest in it when they know somebody else could potentially do the same thing later and they'd have no recourse? Or would it foster healthy competition among startups, and end up encouraging new ideas and innovation overall?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
MS isn't terribly worried about the browser wars any more. They're far more afraid of Apple and Google; witness the abortion that is Metro on W8 and their mad rush to 'converge' the desktop with the tablet. Idiocy? Perhaps. It's certainly a slap in the face to every desktop user.
I assume Mozilla will get another cake.
For those who seek perfection there can be no rest on this side of the grave.
No, I think this means that Bill Gates is going to have the original Netscape documents delivered to his house so he can wipe is ass with them.
I got here through a series of tubes
exactly but they would leverage existing licensing contracts for force the "licensing agreement" just as they've done with most of the Android signers. If you noticed, most of them already licensed and sold Microsoft Windows based products so they were already licensing Windows. Now that they've basically lost the FAT patent they need something to replace it and as you suggested, an SSL patent might be a good one.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
I know most people only think of Netscape with browsers, but I have most of the original Source from the various Netscape projects somewhere.
Netscape back then had an impressive LDAP server, Identity Management Server, Application server, Key servers, Proxy servers, as well as the framework for the web browser. Netscape was huge, and in to lots of technical areas that most people think of as standard services. Netscape was literally the gateway for SunOne Directory server for example.
The age of the patents has to put them close to expiration. This is the first "WTF" when talking about paying such a high price for AOL patents. The next WTF is that most of the Netscape patents were open sourced long long ago. Meaning that the patents have no value (Assuming that UC vs. AT&T would be considered valid case law example, which it has been repeatedly.). I fail to find value in what they bought, at least that goes beyond a year or two.
I'm not a fortune teller, but here is what I see. Microsoft is going to start trying to sue everyone. They see the writing on the wall, hell even our Windows guys at work say "Microsoft will be out of business in 4-5 years" and are trying to learn Linux. Zune was way to late, WinPhone is something nobody wants, XBox is still a huge money sink, and people have no desire to keep buying the same OS and Office products for way more money than they are worth from them.
I see this is a drowning company flailing in the water. I hope they prove me wrong, but then again we in the business know how they have been since day 1.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Shouldn't at least some of these Netscape patents be up for expiration? Any patents they were granted in 94 should have expired last year, and any between 95-99 or so should expire in 2015-2019. I feel like I must be missing some part of the picture, because patents on the verge of expiration seem like they should be almost worthless.
Back in the day, Netscape was going to merge with Yahoo! and move their headquarters to Israel. The new company would be called NetandYahoo!
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
Doubtful... what I would suspect is that MS will use this to target handset (tablet & phone) manufacturers first and foremost. If they can make $5 per handset sold in the world, they'll be pretty content with that, and probably earn back the initial investment in under a few years time. MS will continue to develop solutions (Win8/Phone7-8 etc) in order to get closer to 100% of the pie... but they're diversifying in order to get money from competitors *also*.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
I may be wrong, but the way I read those Netscape deals with both Sun and Redhat was that they bought licenses to use, not the actual patents. Redhat's base trees were the same source I had, at least when I first saw them, which were the same as Sun Microsystems. Could be, and probably were, many deals I was not aware of. At the same time, Sun's product line using Netscape was pretty much the same as Redhat's. Netscape could not sell the same patents to both companies. Redhat acquired a lot of technology after Netscape open sourced most of their code base, was it 1999/ 2000 maybe?. (Sorry, I'm go lazy to go fishing for it now)
Assuming AOL bought out the Netscape portfolio and had extensions done with every single patent, we are now in 2012. Those patent's can't have much life left in them. What ever Microsoft is planning to do with them would have to be done very quickly.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
This billion dollar expenditure to buy something as silly as software patents is the #1 reason why they won't go away. Big business has too much invested in software patents to let some pesky government go about changing the rules. Meanwhile, small business suffers for it.
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..