AOL Patent Deal Means Microsoft Now Holds Vestiges of Netscape 129
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. (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Nothing. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Okay, how about, "Nothing, because otherwise AOL would have sued Mozilla ages ago"?
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AOL *created* the Mozilla Foundation, so why would they sue them? It's a safe bet that Mozilla has a license to any relevant patent.
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as Old97 said -- MS bought patents, not copyrights.
Netscape browser code was open sourced by Netscape just before its demise. Mozilla is not a complete re-write. It is
based on said open sourced code.
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In supplying the code they also supplied free access to any patents implied in that code. So attempt was made to imply restricted access to any patent implied in the opened source code provided. So whilst no public formal agreement was established with regards to patent use, an informal agreement was established to allow access to the patents implied by the code along with access to that code being made accessible under the conditions of the open source licence agreement as that agreement did not specifica
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I was just about to post this. Of course knowing how Microsoft operates, they'll try to sue Mozilla anyway as part of their Embrace, Extend, and then Extinguish philosophy. (On the other hand, they didn't try to use their NCSA Mosaic patents to kill-off Netscape Navigator, so maybe they'll behave.)
(ponder). My dialup service is Netscape. I wonder if that means it will now become part of Microsoft, or will it remain part of AOL. (reads article). Never mind. AOL is keeping the ISP http://www.getnetscape [getnetscape.com]
Re:Nothing. (Score:4, Funny)
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What you use when the DSL or Cable goes down. Or when stuck in a hotel without internet (except a phone). I've downloaded a lot of torrents over 50k these last several years, and no bandwidth caps. :-)
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No bandwidth caps except for the fact that it takes 3 weeks to download a single episode of a TV show.
And the insane telephone bill for a 43.200 minute phone call. A good 2.000€ for 16.43GB means ~122€ per GB.
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Re:Nothing. (Score:4)
and no bandwidth caps. :-)
Yeah, but 50kbps * 1 month is only ~16.43 gigabytes, and that's if you could run it at full throttle 24/7. It caps itself.
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14gb a month was the max. No one could manage more than about 20mb an hour.
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BTW I'm talking about a Northern Californ
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This is also true in (rural) upstate NY. I'm less than 45 minutes out of Albany and Kingston. The satellite companies - Wild Blue, for example - also cap you at a few gigs no matter what you pay... something you find out when your dad is visiting and leaves webstreaming for his favorite city radio station going 24/7 for a week.
I ended up with local RF (something like the old breezenet) through a company that specializes in line of sight internet. I can see the last drop for the cable company but the 1/2 mi
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What you use when the DSL or Cable goes down. Or when stuck in a hotel without internet (except a phone). I've downloaded a lot of torrents over 50k these last several years, and no bandwidth caps. :-)
Cellular hot-spot.
Re:Nothing. (Score:4, Funny)
Dialup... service? What is this?
It's like the Internet on your Droid, but it's over a landline and you use a computer instead of a smart phone.
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Dialup... service? What is this?
It's like the Internet on your Droid, but it's over a landline and you use a computer instead of a smart phone.
It's tethering your desktop computer with your land line phone.
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Bill Gate's Embrace, Extend and then Extinguish philosophy didn't include suing over patents. Under Gate's reign, they never once used patents offensively.
However, under Ballmer it has been a different story, so I don't know.
That being said, if Netscape had browser patents that AOL was sitting on that could be monetized, I'm assuming they would have done so.
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AOL dial-up still exists? And still has customers? Is that because you live in the last place in America that doesn't have broadband, or is sticking with dial-up easier than running the gauntlet to cancel your AOL account? (Been there, commiserate.)
Microsofts' NCSA Mosaic patents? (Score:1)
What NCSA Mosaic patents, MS didn't have any patents or a browser which is why it first approached NCSA for an exclusive license, then MS approached Netscape and only then got a license from Spyglass. They promised Spyglass a royalty for every version sold and the proceeded to give away the co-branded browser as Internet Explorer. Spyglass later on sued Microsoft and then
Re:Nothing. (Score:4, Interesting)
Additionally, the is very little technology that is common between Firefox and Netscape. Firefox has evolved past it's 0.8 code and so for there to be anything left in Firefox that is a major bit from Netscape would be a big surprise.
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You mean like last time?
I wouldn't count on MS shaking in their boots over the DOJ. More likely the patents are not only weak, but about to expire, but then why did MS pay so much for them.
Clearly *something* is going on, but it's not at all clear what. Perhaps AOL threatened to sue MS? Or, alternatively, MS is up to something vile. Neither would be a surprise, and the target isn't necessarily FOSS.
FWIW, recent court decisions have made software patents a lot more questionable than previously (thankfull
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Also MS and Mozilla/Firefox get on quite well these days. I suspect MS prefers Firefox around to at least try and keep Googles browser share in check.
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Let's hope they'll incorporate this great Netscape 4 technology in their crappy IE12 !
Kidding of course.
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Of course you're kidding; that level of technology won't make it to IE until about version 15.
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How about seaMonkey? It has the same look-and-feel-and-functionality as the old Netscape Communicator. Probably has the many of the same patents. Though I doubt MS would go after such a small competitor. ( 1%)
Hmm... (Score:1)
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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.
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Nothing, if Microsoft is smart. (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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The App Store has a number of alternate browsers. So what locking out are you referring to?
Re:Nothing, if Microsoft is smart. (Score:5, Informative)
With the exception of Opera they are not actually alternate browsers. They are safari with some different buttons at the bottom. Apple does not allow other browsers on the app store.
Opera gets away with it because of that minifying thing they do where they MITM each page.
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It is possible for them to, but they don't. In the early days of the App store things like browsers were blocked as "Duplicating core iOS functionality".
Re:Nothing, if Microsoft is smart. (Score:5, Informative)
All alternate browsers must use the Safari rendering engine - in short you can get a fancy front end, but not a new backend (like say Firefox's backend, or Opera, etc) Note that Opera's Mini browser gets a pass since most work doesn't occur on the device, but Opera's backend servers. You can't get the "real" Opera browser on the phone.
Unless somethings changed in the last year, I can't port Opera or Firefox or Chrome over, etc
Re:Nothing, if Microsoft is smart. (Score:5, Informative)
Don't remember telling you if you should care or not. Question was asked and I provided the answer. If that offended your fanboyism I apologize.
But while on the topic - We all know how well only having one Web browser (IE6) worked out for everyone. And if you're providing anecdotes - Safari runs like crap on Windows.
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Don't remember telling you if you should care or not. Question was asked and I provided the answer. If that offended your fanboyism I apologize.
But while on the topic - We all know how well only having one Web browser (IE6) worked out for everyone. And if you're providing anecdotes - Safari runs like crap on Windows.
Safari runs fine on windows for me so perhaps you are doing something wrong? I was an avid firefox user until I upgraded to Firefox 10 and then had my work laptop compromised by a "drive by download" flaw that apparently reappeared in Firefox 10 thanks to some careless "refactoring" done by some developer. So now, I use Safari and IE since Safari has had its "drive by download" flaws patched for some time. Firefox is way too unstable now.
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Translation: I am a happy Apple customer. I do not want and never would want anything non-approved from outside my walled garden. By definition, anything non-approved is bad, and not only do I not want it, nobody else should want it or have any means of getting it.
Well done, you are a *good* consumer and will get a gold star (cost $0.99, has been billed to your account).
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Translation: I am a happy Apple customer. I do not want and never would want anything non-approved from outside my walled garden. By definition, anything non-approved is bad, and not only do I not want it, nobody else should want it or have any means of getting it.
Well done, you are a *good* consumer and will get a gold star (cost $0.99, has been billed to your account).
No, translation, means that I don't want mozilla code running on my iPhone based on the bad experiences that I have had on OS X and recently on Windows 7 at work. The firefox development team is far too undisciplined to be trusted with security. I should not be getting completely rewritten versions every month or so. They should focus on stability and security. Firefox 10 is vulnerable to "drive by downloads" with trojan payloads that require no actions from the user other than accidentally browsing to a co
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subtle like how their choose a new search engine webpage never *ever* puts google on the first page.
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It did when those selection pages were introduced. I remember seeing it there. However, ever since then it quickly fell in the rankings and wound up somewhere in the weeds. Now I have to search for it every time I get a new install and want to change that.
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> Or, if Microsoft is stupid, they'll leverage the patents against other
> browsers and open up a nice new series of anti-competition complaints.
One could argue that just buying the assets of a company they were convicted of putting out of business anti-competitively should bring down immediate anti-competition scrutiny.
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Would only happen if some politicians were strapped for cash. They would call the DOJ to get funding from Microsoft, then drop the case when they felt they had enough. Super-PAC legalization has done away with some of that need.
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I think RedHat now owns what was Netscape Server along with all their old ident stuff and login managers... Wonder if MS now owns the patents to some RH products? I do know RH is offering something from that code base.
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The question to be asked is how MS will use these patents to raise fees on Android
Pretty much this...
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Since we have to live with software patents, the best we can hope for is that these patents are used defensively.
But even if they take some of these patents to war, I just don't see them striking out against Mozilla or Chrome. They aren't exactly Microsoft's biggest targets right now, and I'm pretty sure MS knows they don't want to have to withstand the backlash that attacking Mozilla or Chrome would create.
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And it hasn't been pursued. They've been very subtle.
Patents shmatents. (Score:4, Insightful)
>> 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.
Re:Patents shmatents. (Score:5, Informative)
Netscape actually did beat Microsoft in the antitrust case. (Unfortunately it bankrupted them, and forced Netscape to sell-off to AOL.)
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business as usual (Score:1)
if you can't beat them, buy them
Re:business as usual (Score:5, Insightful)
if you can't beat them, buy them
Beat them and buy them.
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if you can't beat them, buy them
Beat them and buy them.
Beat them, buy them, liquidate them. ...
profit!
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Mitt? Is that you?
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Buy them and beat them.
MicroScape NaviPlorer? (Score:5, Funny)
Mozilla is open source code (Score:2)
Theoretically, versions of derived works from the Netscape code base are safe. If M$ decides to change the license, anything going forward, from this point on, would need to be forked from the current (open source) codebase.
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That's copyright, not patents. Patents apply to any code, not only derivatives.
More Patents = More Lawsuits (Score:3)
no matter (Score:2)
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I'm pretty sure that if they can create trouble for Mozilla, which will quickly result in an antitrust complaint, they can create trouble for Webkit.
Hypothetically, what would happen if.... (Score:3)
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?
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What would happen is the same as what happened after cigarette adversising started to be banned: their profits would increase. Because they were no longer in an arms race with other companies over who could advertise the most (or hoard the most patents and lawyers in this case) they could save the money and make more profit.
MS is competing with Apple and Google, not Mozilla (Score:5, Interesting)
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I agree. MS needs these patents to enable a revenue stream past their current cash cows into the post-PC aera.
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Not to mention the blatantly anti-open-source nature of their app store TOS agreement.
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Perhaps. It's certainly a slap in the face to every desktop user.
No more than Gnome3 or Unity.
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Cake (Score:2)
because (Score:1)
Mailing Floppies (Score:2)
Did they get the patent on mass-mailing your software to customers on floppy disks? That could net them millions of dollars. Well, Zimbabwe dollars at least.
Idea bout how to solve this patent mess (Score:1)
Microsoft wasted cash, look forward a few months (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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RedHat now owns the Netscape servers you mentioned. Please expand on your thoughts regarding this patent deal.
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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 technolo
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Redhat bought the code base for the servers, and they bought the server business. They did open the code as you say. But RH *didn't* get the parents. They were separate. MS could well give RH a PITA that way. Dunno about Sun/Oracle tho.
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Buying the code base is not buying the patents. Do you have any information showing that they actually purchased the patents for Netscape Directory Server or Netscape Proxy Server for example?
The full product line from Sun has that same code base, which is why I'm pretty sure it was just licensing for the patents that both Redhat and Sun purchased. For example, Sun Directory server version 5.x still used "ns" as their directory structure and most of the tools were prefixed with ns. It was version 6 where
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That's what I'm saying - I'm saying that RH didn't get the patents. And that is the danger. They bought the business built around those products (support, existing contracts, etc.) but now MS has the patents.
Any of these to expire? (Score:2)
Old Netscape joke (Score:4, Funny)
Back in the day, Netscape was going to merge with Yahoo! and move their headquarters to Israel. The new company would be called NetandYahoo!
Old men fighting (Score:2, Flamebait)
Has anyone else noticed how irrelevant Microsoft, Internet Explorer and (sadly) Firefox are in 2012?
If this were 2001, I would agree that this is a big story.
Let Microsoft fight over the dredges of the desktop market. That's a declining market.
No one will take your Firefox away from you Linux desktop, so untwist your knickers.
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Firefox isn't irrelevant. It's got a considerable market share, and without having ads everywhere (chrome), or bundling it with windows. That's pretty respectable. It's been growing, while IE has been dying too.
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All that from one post? Amazing.
Why Software Patents Won't Go Away (Score:5, Insightful)
Patent life expiration (Score:2)
I spent $1bn... (Score:1)
...and all I got was the <blink> tag
Why doesn't Google oppose this? (Score:2)
Why doesn't Google oppose MS purchase of AOL patents? If it were the other way around, if Google were to try an buy AOL patents, msft and friends would be having a fit. Msft, apple, and oracle, would be screaming and crying about Google's monopoloy and so on. We know this because we have already seen it.
Interesting patents acquired (Score:1)
Patent No. 6854085, which covers technology to fill out forms on Web pages automatically.
Patent No. 5657390, for the technology called Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), now called Transport Layer Security (TLS), which sets up an encrypted communication channel between browsers and the Web servers they connect to.
Paten
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Re:Peter Kafka is NOT Marc Andreesen (Score:4, Interesting)
LoB