Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The IE 11 user-agent forced Mozilla to freeze part of its user-agent string

miketaylr.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 143 posts

Re: The IE 11 user-agent forced Mozilla to freeze part of its user-agent string

#11

Post by rmccue »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #9

In retrospect, wasn't putting "Mozilla" in your user-agent string when you aren't the Mozilla Foundation or project a trademark violation, that they could have enforced?

The use of “Mozilla” I believe predates the Mozilla Foundation, as it was from Netscape’s user agent string before it was spun out. https://webaim.org/blog/user-agent-string-history/

Re: The IE 11 user-agent forced Mozilla to freeze part of its user-agent string

#12

Post by eyelidlessness »

zitterbewegung wrote: post #6

Are they talking about only MacBook Pros with Intel chips since they reference Butterfly keyboards or is that sarcasm that sort of feels out of place ?

I strongly suspect they’re referring to the aspects of the UA string specific to their own device. I.e. they used an MBP (whose vintage can be intuited from its notorious keyboard problems and) which has evidently stopped receiving OS updates past 10.15. Edit to add: I also suspect they thought this was a clever way to avoid some nerd inevitably chiding them to upgrade their OS, but it’s probably too clever to achieve that.

Re: The IE 11 user-agent forced Mozilla to freeze part of its user-agent string

#14

Post by jchw »

pwdisswordfish9 wrote: post #10
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's anything that communicates via HTTP. A WebDAV file manager isn't a web browser. It's still a user agent.

[flagged]

Nope. A web browser browsers the world wide web. A WebDAV file browser just speaks HTTP. No hypertext, no web.

edit: Wow, it's not really that complicated. Please take a moment to stop taking a crowbar to each and every crack and crevice of this argument. It's not about hypertext specifically, or hypermedia, or HTTP, or HTML, that's missing the point. The point is, a web browser is software that browses websites. A WebDAV browser browses WebDAV. WebDAV is built on web technology and can be used inside a web browser, but it is no more "the web" than anything else. A WebDAV file browser is absolutely no more a web browser than the Deno JavaScript runtime is. I can't browse HN with a WebDAV browser, or Deno. Speaking HTTP does not make you a web browser.

Re: The IE 11 user-agent forced Mozilla to freeze part of its user-agent string

#15

Post by jdsully »

rmccue wrote: post #11
jrochkind1 wrote: post #9

In retrospect, wasn't putting "Mozilla" in your user-agent string when you aren't the Mozilla Foundation or project a trademark violation, that they could have enforced?

The use of “Mozilla” I believe predates the Mozilla Foundation, as it was from Netscape’s user agent string before it was spun out. https://webaim.org/blog/user-agent-string-history/

They would have passed on the trademark rights with the rest of the IP

Re: The IE 11 user-agent forced Mozilla to freeze part of its user-agent string

#16

Post by TylerE »

jchw wrote: post #14
pwdisswordfish9 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Nope. A web browser browsers the world wide web. A WebDAV file browser just speaks HTTP. No hypertext, no web. edit: Wow, it's not really that complicated. Please take a moment to stop taking a crowbar to each and every crack and crevice of this argument. It's not about hypertext specifically, or hypermedia, or HTTP, or HTML, that's missing the point. The point is, a web browser is software that browses websites. A W…

[flagged]

Re: The IE 11 user-agent forced Mozilla to freeze part of its user-agent string

#18

Post by eyelidlessness »

pwdisswordfish9 wrote: post #10
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's anything that communicates via HTTP. A WebDAV file manager isn't a web browser. It's still a user agent.

[flagged]

A homing pigeon, on the other hand, is not. But certain standards could allow it to deliver User-Agent headers nonetheless.

Re: The IE 11 user-agent forced Mozilla to freeze part of its user-agent string

#19

Post by rileymat2 »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #9

In retrospect, wasn't putting "Mozilla" in your user-agent string when you aren't the Mozilla Foundation or project a trademark violation, that they could have enforced?

I doubt the user agent string would lead to a confusion of consumers, if consumers are end users and not web servers.

I don't think you can ban the use of a word with trademark if it does not cause confusion.

Re: The IE 11 user-agent forced Mozilla to freeze part of its user-agent string

#20

Post by cma »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #9

In retrospect, wasn't putting "Mozilla" in your user-agent string when you aren't the Mozilla Foundation or project a trademark violation, that they could have enforced?

You can't use trademark in that way if they would need it for compatibility. Nintendo made games have a "nintendo" title scroll on Gameboy and checked for it as "genuine cartridge" protection in a special chip, and sued third parties for trademark violations if they included the title scroll to get around the protection chip.

Courts ruled Nintendo couldn't use trademark in that way, that it was laundering in more rights than trademark provides.

Post reply on HN