Wow, this guy has balls...

[Jon P. Inghram]

http://news.com.com/2100-1028_3-5088349.html

[Technoid]

http://www.xcf.berkeley.edu/~wei/viola/aboutEolasMicrosoft.html

[TnT]

Good god, if what Wei says in his writeup is true than it is quite awful that none of that was revealed in court.

Although if, like one of the articles mentioned, a new and better plugin architecture can be developed and implemented into the OSS browsers quick we may just be better off.

[Jon P. Inghram]

IF this gets enforced, it'll cripple retailers that have Windows products on their shelves too... the judge and jury that went along with that were so ignorant that it's amazing they were able to communicate well enough to make a judgment in the first place apparently.

[Gurm]

DIDN'T I TELL YOU PEOPLE THE PATENT WAS TOO BROAD?

Which one of you said "I don't believe you, Gurm"...?

- Gurm

[High_Jumbllama]

In a Shaggy Voice, It wasn't me.

[Kooldino]

Originally posted by Gurm
DIDN'T I TELL YOU PEOPLE THE PATENT WAS TOO BROAD?

Which one of you said "I don't believe you, Gurm"...?

- Gurm

What exactly does the patent say?

[Jammrock]

Yes, but the Viola case can still be heard in the appeal. Just because one judge won't grant it doesn't mean an other judge will follow suit.

M$ should take it to the 9th district federal court of appeals.

Jammrock

[Gurm]

Jammrock,

Oh, they will.

Kooldino,

Basically the patent covers "any means used to launch external programs seamlessly from a web browser" or some such equally bullshit language.

I mean, I'd _never_ be able to get a patent on something NON-software related with broad terms like that.

Nobody will grant you a patent on "any means of transferring water from point A to point B", because that's not an invention - that's a category.

- Gurm

[leech]

Hey, wonder if that would include something like Nautilus? Considering that it uses components from Mozilla to embed webpage browsing within the file manager..... But I think that is classified as something all together different than "launch external programs" since it's not the entire program, just a component of it. Also you would think that it could be argued that some plug-ins are ONLY plug-ins and are not seperate programs. What I mean by this, for example, is that with Adobe Acrobat, you can load up just the program, or use the plug-in. But other things like a VRML viewer that isn't a stand alone program, but will only work within a browser would not neccesarily be an "external program" but an extension, correct?

Leech

P.S. Got to love Semantics