> Has there ever been attempt to implement it in openssl, gnutls, etc, so as to not depend on this ActiveX plugin?

SEED is implemented in NSS (Firefox's network security backend)[0] as of 2010. I'm not sure whether or not that removes the dependency on IE, though.

Edit: looks like it's implemented in OpenSSL as well[1].

[0]: https://bugzil.la/453234 [1]: https://www.openssl.org/docs/apps/ciphers.html#SEED_ciphersu...