Microsoft to alter Web browser to comply with court ruling

Everybody is going to hate these "workarounds".

No kidding, but I wouldn't blame Microsoft for this one. After all, if they did license this technology, web designers would still have to redo their pages for anyone using other browsers anyway.

I see another approach: a DLL which looks for a certain application attempt to open an alert and simply bypasses it.

Actually I came up with an idea I was presenting on several tech boards before meeting up with "Top Speed" (Golden Eagle) and becomming an anti Linux troll concerning a way the FOSS community themselves could fight software patenting in a lot of cases. So I will present it here and see what the FOSS and anti software patent crowd here think of it.

It basically consists of dumping the LGPL and and replacing it with double licensing programmer's libraries with the regular GPL and a second license that allows closed source proprietary use under the following conditions.

1. That the closed source user donates all his existing software patents if any to the public domain.

2. That he never tries to apply for any software patent other than a company trademark. (I still see HARDWARE and non computer related patents as legitimate and they would be exempt from this section.)

3. That he never takes part as a plaintif in any software patent related lawsuit.

4. That if he violates these terms the second license is revoked for him and any software he distributes using the library in question must then be distributed ONLY as full Free Software under the terms of the GPL or he must cease and desist in its distribution.

As an aside, I have switched from Real Media to Flash for video presentation.

Apparently anything loaded with OBJECT or EMBED tags can come under this patent, and that includes Flash. I use a lot of Flash myself, so I'm watching this with some interest. Macromedia has a page up about the changes that might be coming.

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