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Because of an existing patent on launching plugins directly from the browser, and because the company refused to settle to a decent royalty rate to use it, Microsoft is making changes to stay away from the patent.
All other browsers, including mozilla and any other browser that can show content in the browser (such as quicktime, real, flash, and many other popular plug ins) will be forced to do similar or to pay a royalty fee. These guys want a VERY high license fee, and it is unlikely that anyone will line up to pay it (especially not the "free" browser people). Already Real and others are re-writing their applications to work in this new enviornment.
Automatically invoking the plug in is in violation of the patent.
All browsers (including the browsers on apples and unix) that have similar functionality will have to be changed as well.
Another sucky application of a patent.
Alex
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2003-10-09, 12:39 AM
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