[OT] Free software versus software idea patents

[Westley Martínez]

On Thu, 2011-04-14 at 14:02 +0000, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> On Thu, 14 Apr 2011 19:15:05 +1000, Chris Angelico wrote:
> 
> > 4) Assumes people aren't deliberately fiddling the figures. Yeah, that
> > would be correct. We're in the realm of conspiracy theories here... does
> > anyone seriously think that browser stats are THAT important that they'd
> > go to multiple web servers with deceitful hits? 
> 
> Back in the day, not that many years ago, when it looked like Internet 
> Explorer would never dip below 90% market share and web developers coded 
> for IE quirks instead of standards as a matter of course, I used to 
> fantasize of writing a Windows virus that (apart from propagating) did 
> nothing but change the user-agent string on IE. It would have been 
> awesome to witness the consternation among web developers.
> 
> But thanks to the EU doing what the US DOJ refused to do, and the grass-
> roots popularity of Firefox (plus a fewer well-known even if not often 
> used browsers like Safari and Opera), and then Google's scarily efficient 
> way they can capture hearts and minds on the Internet, IE's market share 
> has been whittled away to the point that there are places in the world 
> where IE is a minority browser. A large minority, it is true, but still a 
> minority.
> 
> Now, if only we could convince web users that having your browser execute 
> untrusted code downloaded from the Internet is not such a good idea, 
> supposed sandbox or not. What the world needs is a virus that silently 
> removes Javascript and Flash from browsers...
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Steven

Also, why aren't Opera and Google criticized for their proprietary
browsers (Chrome is essentially a proprietary front-end)? Is it because
their browsers follow web standards, or is it because we have demonized
Microsoft?