Eolas, The US Patent Office and a bunch of lawyers are pure evil….

A better word is not functioning as intended. Now our users have to click on the “active-x” control to enable it. This is really frustrating for causal users of sites since some Flash “mouse over” affects won’t work. Not to mention that even QuickTime, Windows Media Player, and about any else fun that uses a plug-in in Internet Explorer will have the same problems.

I’m not sure what frustrates me the most about all of this, but I’ve decided to write a list about it all. Part therapy for my own anger, and partly to demonstrate how insane and out of control this whole mess is.

So here we go the top reasons why Eolas vs. Microsoft is totally $#ucked up.

1. The first thing that really scares the hell out of me, (and it should everyone else) is the fact that a 1 person company, with a bunch of lawyers based in the United States could virtually screw up millions of web pages around the world. How did we get to this point, too much control in the hands of too few? Yes, this leads back to the old Microsoft is the evil empire yadda, yadda thing .. but really. Think about it, no one company should have this much control over a technology that so many people depend on. The fact that Microsoft creates one change to their code and hundreds of thousands of developers have to work over time to find fixes should have us all rethinking where we spend our money?
2. The fact that the US Patent office ever even granted this patent is beyond me. Are these guys a sleep at the wheel? And more importantly isn’t granting this patent almost like telling everyone hey, someone just passed a patented about driving on the right hand side of the road. As of Monday everyone will have to drive on the left unless you want to buy a “license” from Eolas. I agree with many people, there should be no software patents; the EU is on the ball when it comes to this.
3. Now that the mightily US Patent office has granted this insane and overly broad patent the rest of the world has to suffer. Really, because Microsoft controls 95% of the browser market even in countries where the patent doesn’t apply it will affect them. Doesn’t anyone see a problem with this? Why should  the United States patent office decide what is legal in my country?
4. I’ve been reading a lot about “Eolas-Proof” JavaScript work-arounds to the Flash embed problem. (I personally like the FlashObject method the best). But really, as the 1 man show that runs Eolas would you be proud that your company’s name is now part of an internet sub-culture that hates you? Really, is this good PR? No, they don’t give a rats @ss-#ole! This company was started for one thing, and one thing only? ¦ greed? ¦ to sue Microsoft.
5. I must admit that for the first time in a long, long while I weight in on the side of Microsoft on this one. Yes, Microsoft is a monopoly, yes, they are trying to take over the world (see my first couple of points above) but lets give Microsoft some slack here, if they gave into every patent dispute / greedy money hungry lawyer they wouldn’t be in business. And I’m glad to see (while it’s painful the rest of us) that Microhog didn’t give into these slim-ball Eolas characters! They just changed the code a little and told Eolas to go suck dirt.
6. Finally, the conspiracy theory guy in me thinks maybe this is all a big scam. Maybe Microsoft wanted this law-suit? ¦ maybe this is very easy way to squeeze out Flash a little to make room for “Sparkle” aka, Microsoft’s little Flash-killer app due out someone in the near future. I wonder if a future version of this technology will be built into Internet Explorer or even the OS to skirt around the “plug-in” patent issue? ¦. thus leaving Adobe’s little plug-in harder to use? hmmmmmm .. Food for thought.