Say goodbye to ActiveX in Internet Explorer

Yep, looks like another patent lawsuit for MS. This came across bugtraq but I think the important thing to note is that existing installs will continue to use ActiveX.


BUGTRAQ BEGIN HERE
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Hi,

As everyone knows, ActiveX controls and the <OBJECT> tag has been a big source of security holes in Internet Explorer. However, it looks like support for ActiveX controls is going to be removed from Internet Explorer. A small company called Eolas recently won a $521 million judgment against Microsoft for patent infringement. The Eolas patent covers plugins in Web pages to show multimedia content.

The $521 million payment covers past infringement. Because Bill Gates loathes to pay per-copy royalties, it looks like Microsoft is going to either partially or completely remove support for ActiveX controls in Internet Explorer rather than pay Eolas any more money.

This Internetnews.com article talks about the fallout from the Eolas
victory:

http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news...le.php/3070591

Here's the Eolas patent:

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-P...=HITOFF&d=PALL
&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=5,838,906.WKU.&OS=PN/5,838,
906&RS=PN/5,838,906

(This URL will probably requiring copying and pasting into your browser since it wraps to 2 or 3 lines.)

The W3C has set up a discussion list to talk about replacements for ActiveX in Internet Explorer:

http://www.w3.org/2003/08/patent

BUGTRAQ SNIP HERE
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--TH13
:p

thats a gud news for the end users and admins....a relief to the persons who are concerned about it...

Bill Gates is a greedy, greedy man. Why does he not make his OWN ActiveX-like controls like he did with JAVA (J# anybody?) and leave the other guy out of the loop if he does not wanna pay the "little person" what he/she deserves?

Quote:

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thats a gud news for the end users and admins....a relief to the persons who are concerned about it...

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LOL, unless your entire business enterprise is built around ActiveX technology.

Mine's not! :D

about bloody time too is all I'll say.... I don't actually know anyone who uses ActiveX controls on websites these days anyway.....does anyone??

Z

I get pr0n mail spam with ActiveX controls on them. Pretty pictures of "SHE TAKES IT ALL IN" and it's some kind of horse or something. "CLICK HERE FOR FREE TOUR!" Sure... pay for something i can get for free elsewhere. I am all over it.

Hey Zonewalker,

I have a friend that uses it for internal apps. at his location, almost exclusively. They are a VB shop and chose it because it's easy as hell to code in MS Visual Studio and plugs in nicely with all the canned controls, etc... plus they already had a developer license so no extra fees... Poor bastard. :D

DoD ... heh well.. my mail filters keep out most of the spam.. although I do get some very weird ones slipping through occassionally... one that got through recently desired to give me information on my septic tank... I mean wtf??!

RoadClosed... LOL well someone has to use em I suppose :D

Z

I think this is very interesting. We should think about how Microsoft tells us to pay for their software, and look at them...they steal from Eolas. I don't know about you all, but Microsoft needs to practice what they preach. Just my 2 cents worth. I'm still laughing at them!

dOOd, I don't know if you realize this but Microsoft actually developed VERY LITTLE of their own stuff. It's all absorbed into the evil Borg Cube. I have to admit they improve on most things but they have a ton of licensed software in their products.

Quote:

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Originally posted here by Drunk On Duvel
Bill Gates is a greedy, greedy man. Why does he not make his OWN ActiveX-like controls like he did with JAVA (J# anybody?) and leave the other guy out of the loop if he does not wanna pay the "little person" what he/she deserves?

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Umm he dose won activeX its a MS component.

I think all of you are missing the big implacations of this case, MS was just a test case (a 100 pound gorrila of a test case but just a test case.). This will grow to cover Java, falsh, PHP, any thing that can embed an aplication in a web page without the use of CGI. This is huge and affects every one on the web, we will eather need t opay these guys roylties or give up all dynamic content.