Yahoo will be announcing on Monday that it has purchased Arlo Rose’s Konfabulator for an undisclosed amount of money. Yahoo will also be announcing that it will drop the price for Konfabulator from the current $19.99 to zero. That’s right. Zippo. Nada. And that’s pretty konfabulous.
Konfabulator is the original software which gave Mac enthusiasts the popular “widgets”. In fact, they are so popular that Apple decided to borg the widget concept into its Dashboard for Tiger.
However there is no question but that Arlo Rose’s widgets came first, and indeed Aunty is given pause to wonder whether Yahoo has acquired the full IP rights to Konfabulator, and, if so, whether they will be pressing those rights legally in Apple’s face?
However, IP rights are not the reason that Yahoo is claiming that they made the acquisition. According to a report in Macworld, Yahoo courted Konfabulator because Yahoo wanted “an easy way to open up its APIs to the developer community and allow them easy access to the information on the Yahoo! Web site. In doing this, Widgets could be built without having to scrape sites in order to get information.”
Said Rose, in an exclusive midnight interview with Aunty, “This is a great opportunity for us to do some really cool stuff with Yahoo’s new XML APIs and make Widget Developers first class citizens.”
The Internet Patrol is completely free, and reader-supported. Your tips via CashApp, Venmo, or Paypal are appreciated! Receipts will come from ISIPP.
CashApp us
Venmo us
Paypal us
They are obviously already first class developers.
Yahoo also alluded to more developments in the Mac-erly direction in the future. “There is a move at Yahoo! — in addition to Konfabulator — to move more onto the Mac. We want to make sure we find a way to be more cross platform,” explained Tony Schneider, VP of the Yahoo Developer Network.
Along with making Konfabulator free, Yahoo has indicated that they will refund the Konfabulator purchase price for anyone who purchased Konfabulator in the past two months.
The Internet Patrol is completely free, and reader-supported. Your tips via CashApp, Venmo, or Paypal are appreciated! Receipts will come from ISIPP.
CashApp us
Venmo us
Paypal us
how long have i been bitching about yahoo??
i’m telling you, time to go with YABB’s and fuckin boycott yahoo .
put a stake right thru their fascist ass sucking heart.
jimi
CPOP
Watch your back at all times with Yahoo
Check out the story about Yahoo. Cancel your membership. Do not
subscribe
to Fascist Web hosts.
I am cancelling my Yahoo membership in protest against Yahoo’s
policy of
releasing names of account holders to the Chinese government for
purposes of
prosecuting political “dissidents”. (See story in NY Times Sunday
Sept 18)
Yahoo’s promise of security is evidently an empty one. Their actions
have resulted in the jailing of a Yahoo member for 10 years!! Can
their
promises
of privace withstand a challenge in this country? Our own
government is
currently arguing its right to hold anyone for any length of time for
supicion of
terrorism. Who is safe, especially with the Iraq war going so
badly now?
I am taking my name off Yahoo’s list of members, a list whose numbers
determine the value of advertising on Yahoo. I only suggest that
any member
who
continues with Yahoo remember that they open themselves to
prosecution for
“private” statements, allegedly covered by Yahoo’s privace
assurances.
I await Yahoo’s public apology for this patent violation of privacy
agreements, both stated and understood, and a mission statement
precluding
future
violations of privacy.
Hrm… judging by the comments, there’s been some stealth editing to this article. Aunty? Play nice with your visitors!
so, where do I go to get my refund? How far back does the refund extend? Why is it if you google “yahoo konfabulator refund” you get zilch? Throw me a bone, I can always use 20 bucks.
From DaringFireball.net:
“Obviously, Apple ripped off the idea for Dashboard. Stolen wholesale, without even the decency to mention where they took the original idea.
Which, of course, would be the desk accessories from the original 1984 Macintosh — conceived by Bud Tribble and engineered (mostly) by Andy Hertzfeld.
Dashboard is not a rip-off of Konfabulator. Yes, they are doing very much the same thing. But what it is that they’re doing was not an original idea to Konfabulator. The scope of a “widget” is very much the modern-day equivalent of a desk accessory.
What is original to Konfabulator? That its widgets are based on a scripting language? That’s not original. There are a slew of other scripting runtimes that allow you to create little-applets-in-windows. E.g. on the old Mac OS, there was OneClick.”
http://daringfireball.net/2004/06/dashboard_vs_konfabulator