US Copyright Office Requests Comments on IE-Only Service (Groklaw) [LWN.net]

US Copyright Office Requests Comments on IE-Only Service (Groklaw)

Posted Aug 12, 2005 20:14 UTC (Fri) by huffd (guest, #10382)
Parent article: US Copyright Office Requests Comments on IE-Only Service (Groklaw)

Remember how Adobe sunk their hooks into everybody. Now you have to use a PDF reader to even pay your taxes.

If this is allowed to be a precident. Nobody could apply for a job or get their SS or transact money at a bank.

This is a test case if they can forge the way others will follow.

On the other hand if M$ were to make IE available to Linux they might be able to make a case...

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err

Posted Aug 12, 2005 20:19 UTC (Fri) by ccyoung (subscriber, #16340) [Link]

"On the other hand if M$ were to make IE available to Linux" would you use it?

err

Posted Aug 12, 2005 20:57 UTC (Fri) by MathFox (subscriber, #6104) [Link]

I've had the "joy" of "working" with Internet Explorer for HP-UX for some time... until we complained hard and long enough to get Netscape offically installed on the server. IE for Linux has to work significantly better than the HP-UX version before I consider using it.
Twelve developers on one server; only two could use IE at the same time due to a lack of semaphores (IIRC). After 15 minutes of (non-) use IE entered some error message spewing loop and became unsuitable for websurfing.

err

Posted Aug 13, 2005 1:49 UTC (Sat) by huffd (guest, #10382) [Link]

Of course I wouldn't but that is how absurd their argument is toward using it. Unless it the browser is a cross platform browser this type of lock in should be illegal.

"cross platform" isn't the issue here

Posted Aug 13, 2005 6:20 UTC (Sat) by rqosa (guest, #24136) [Link]

The real issue is not support for this or that platform. For example, even if there were a GNU/Linux build of the Unix version of Internet Explorer (and assuming that it would work with this service; that Windows IE does doesn't mean that it would), what if one wanted to use *BSD or something else?

Instead, what's needed is that the network protocols and file formats used for this be both open (i.e. publically documented) and free/libre (i.e. using them does not infringe a patent).

IE in Linux

Posted Aug 15, 2005 9:06 UTC (Mon) by lacostej (subscriber, #2760) [Link]

I think IE works under wine.

IE in Linux

Posted Aug 15, 2005 12:49 UTC (Mon) by rkn (guest, #31837) [Link]

To say it works you'd have to be drinking a whole lot of wine.

IE in Linux

Posted Aug 15, 2005 14:54 UTC (Mon) by lacostej (subscriber, #2760) [Link]

I agree that I hadn't tried this for a while.

So I just followed this
http://frankscorner.org/index.php?p=ie6

IE installs and seems to work OK except for the crashing which happens easily if you start stressing the browser. It may be sufficient for my needs though (check web site compatibility once in a while).

PDF is actually open

Posted Aug 12, 2005 20:27 UTC (Fri) by rgmoore (subscriber, #75) [Link]

That's not a fair comparison. PDF is actually an open standard. While Acrobat reader is by far the most popular reader- and many sites make it seem as though it's the only option- other software authors can and do write PDF readers that work fine. I've been quite satisfied with Evince on Linux and Preview on OSX.

PDF is actually open?

Posted Aug 13, 2005 15:50 UTC (Sat) by zblaxell (subscriber, #26385) [Link]

Are there any free PDF readers that can execute embedded Javascript?

I gather that there are lots of PDF forms floating around in some jurisdictions that require JavaScript to work properly. Last time I checked, none of xpdf, evince, gpdf, kpdf, or gv would execute JavaScript annotation links.

US Copyright Office Requests Comments on IE-Only Service (Groklaw)

Posted Aug 12, 2005 21:09 UTC (Fri) by coriordan (subscriber, #7544) [Link]

> if M$ were to make IE available to Linux they might be able to make a case

Making a web-browser like IE available on a kernel would involve practically writing an operating system, but I guess you're talking about GNU/Linux.

This is true. If M$ produced an IE for GNU/Linux, it would be very hard for us to argue.

This is because we haven't been asking for what we want. We want to use software that is free software, but we've been saying we want to use software that runs on [GNU/]Linux.

The solution is to stop saying the wrong thing and start saying the right thing.

US Copyright Office Requests Comments on IE-Only Service (Groklaw)

Posted Aug 13, 2005 5:58 UTC (Sat) by rqosa (guest, #24136) [Link]

That's not quite the right thing to say either, IMO. The right thing to say is that it shouldn't require any software in particular to use it; that is, it must not be a secret how to write software that can use it, and also that it be legal to do so.

Of course, the existence of free software that can use it is a sufficient condition for at least the first of those two.