[Techtalk] why is Active X in web pages evil, but not Perl/PHP/Javascript?

Almut Behrens almut-behrens at gmx.net
Thu Jan 20 19:10:07 EST 2005


On Wed, Jan 19, 2005 at 08:48:54PM -0600, Kathryn Hogg wrote:
> Almut Behrens said:
> >> I've heard of an ActiveX plugin for Firefox.  Of course this will only
> >> run
> >> on Windoze.
> >
> > Hopefully!!   Honestly, I do hope that they won't ever seriously
> > consider making it available for the Linux platform -- in some mood
> > like "oh, while we're at it", or "now that we've already implemented
> > a large part of it, why not...".
> > I can't get fully rid of that latent fear, though... ;(
> 
> I didn't read the website too carefully but I did see that the crossover
> plugin is supported.  So it is possible to get ActiveX components running
> on linux via wine.

Bad enough ;)  Hopefully, it remains sufficiently cumbersome to deploy.
Now, please don't tell me that the next Linux version of Firefox will
ship with Crossover/Wine/whatever packaged and all nicely setup by
default...


I'm kinda worried the Firefox plot could turn out something like this:

First, we put every effort into giving them all the candy stuff they're
used to, like cute install wizards, etc.  Without that they wouldn't
even consider trying it out, would they?

Next, once they've actually installed Firefox, it of course has to
compete with that other browser they love so much, so we need to supply
a "fully" functioning alternative with all the nifty features you
cannot live without, like ActiveX.  Sure.  So we just do it, it doesn't
cause too much of a headache to implement under Windoze, after all.

... Some time passes and more and more users in fact are switching to
Firefox, because they slowly realize that even those Open Source folks
do produce decent software...

Great! Success!! Victory!!!   But wouldn't it be a good idea to take
advantage of that beginning open-mindedness, and have them try out
other Open Source products... or, maybe, even Linux entirely?!  Right,
that's the way to go -- let's get them all away from that evil OS!
Now that they've familiarised themselves with one major cross-platform
application, they could migrate rather smoothly.  And, with those fancy
desktops we've come up in the meantime, some might not even notice...

Hm, but we still have to get that ActiveX stuff integrated somehow
into the system.  We wouldn't want to risk that they feel put off by
missing functionality!  Ah well, we've managed to get Wine, Samba and
all those working, so it should be doable, eh?  Right.
Then we'd only have to make sure it's activated by default - otherwise
they wouldn't find out how to do it - and everything should be fine.  
What are you saying?  Viruses, spyware, SSECCURITTY??  C'mon!  that's
the price you have to pay -- but look at what we've achieved...!


Now, please tell me I'm just having a bad dream and everything will be
okay when I wake up... _pleeze_!

Almut



More information about the Techtalk mailing list