Here is an interview with the CEO of Opera. “There are obviously some users who go between Opera and Mozilla. They have Opera one week, Mozilla the next week, and back to Opera… But we have a shared common goal: we would actually like to see open standards prevail.”
Opera is a decent browser the free key code allowed me to try it out and its pretty good however i would not have paid for it.
why would you pay for it anyway when registration keys are available online?
I’m sorry if I don’t follow Tetzchner’s stats, but I’ve used Opera one week, Mozilla/Firefox the next week and I’ve sticked with Mozilla/Firefox for 3 years and counting.
Opera doesn’t have the best feature of the Mozilla suite: a GPL license. Until that, I won’t consider using it on a daily basis. But nevertheless it’s good to see that they intend to follow standards.
[quote]Opera doesn’t have the best feature of the Mozilla suite: a GPL license. Until that, I won’t consider using it on a daily basis. But nevertheless it’s good to see that they intend to follow standards.[/quote]
If Opera were to GPL the browser, how do you suppose they would make money that way? This isn’t the sort of thing where you can sell a lot of service or support, so maybe they could sell t-shirts?
If Opera were to GPL the browser, how do you suppose they would make money that way? This isn’t the sort of thing where you can sell a lot of service or support, so maybe they could sell t-shirts?
Dual license like Qt or Reiserfs.
[quote]Dual license like Qt or Reiserfs.[/quote]
Can you explain in a nutshell how this works?
There’s a good explaination here:
http://openvpn.net/archive/openvpn-users/2004-09/msg00310.html
Wouldn’t really work with Opera, as corporations don’t really have a need to hack on Opera code internally.
So As I understand it, if Opera was released under a dual license, I could either use it via the GPL license, or I could pay Opera $10,000 (or whatever the asking price is) for a license that would allow me to do whatever I want with it, including sell it?
As for open standards, as I understand it, Opera is currently the most standards-compliant of all the browsers, including Firefox.
> Dual license like Qt or Reiserfs.
This works fine for graphic libraries because Trolltech has KDE on their side, but I doubt this would work for the browser/email market.
Any idea?
It is unfortunate that so many make such a big deal of the GPL, and avoiding non-GPL items. Skilled programers & companies deserve to be rewarded for the high-quality programs they write, and Opera is a fantastic example of a high quality program.
I have been a registered user of Opera for years, and there are so many features that can’t be found anywhere else, that I feel lost browsing on any other browser. (Sure, Firefox has a few new extensions that I wish Opera could use, but I imagine Opera will eventually have them too.)
Firefox and all other Mozilla-based products, including the Suite, do not use the GPL, they use the Mozilla Public License and/or the Mozilla EULA.
Most Firefox Extensions are indeed licensed under the GPL or LGPL, but Firefox itself is not.
http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/licensing.html
Mozilla doesn’t use the GPL, its uses its own Mozilla Open-source licence my dear
If Mozilla’s best feature is its license, then you could also say that Epiphany or even Links are both superior to Opera
Stay with your “superior” browsers, I prefer to pay 39 bucks a year and to use Opera
If Mozilla’s best feature is its license, then you could also say that Epiphany or even Links are both superior to Opera
If you’re one who thinks that the superiority of a program depends soley on its license, then yes … you would have to agree that Links is a better browser than Opera. In fact, based on this line of logic, I could write a browser that only recognized the HR tag and it would still technically be better than Opera.
In fact, based on this line of logic, I could write a browser that only recognized the HR tag and was open source, and it would still technically be better than Opera.
Ironically, I get a rendering bug on page 3 of the interview. That “In other news” skyscrapper covers half of the article.
This is on Deer Park Alpha 2.
Surely that’s why it’s an alpha?
… then that doesn’t say much for the product.
what do you need a product at all when you have such a magnificent licence ;D
Opera is open source, right? Good to see that the Opera folks are supporting open standards now and being so honest. They could have been liars and tried to market Opera with phony “open standards” buzzwords and never released the source code…
Open standards is not a phony idea. Foolish comment.
No, you misunderstand. Opera is closed source and proprietary. However, they support _open standards_.
This is the important thing – as nice as free open source software is, we can never expect all programs to be free, due to the time and effort that goes into producing them. However, we can expect and demand open standards.
About Opera’s CTO:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hakon_Wium_Lie
He is best known for proposing the concept of Cascading Style Sheets in 1994. He has worked for, among others, the W3C, INRIA, CERN, the MIT Media Lab and Norwegian telecom research in Televerket.
In 2005 he proposed the Acid2 test which was later developed and published by the Web Standards Project.
Opera has always been known to support open standards.
Ah yes, the ‘ol “disingenuous troll.” Classy.
Opera has always supported open standards. One of the people behind Opera is one of the fathers of CSS.
Don’t be confused by your hatred against Micrsoft. You can support open standards even if you don’t open your source.
GPL is a just like a virus that keeps spreading. You cannot stop it, and it keeps many companies away from open source solutions. Better to use BSD-licenses or MIT license. At least that’s my opinion.
“GPL is like a virus”
IMO You are like a troll.
Mod me down while the parent post stays at 0 or rises, go for it, feel the hypocrite horns grow.
Oh, not again. Many people, many opinions.But at least where everything-BSD would make it magnificently easy for companies to use code and apps developed by community people to earn loads of cash without any need to contribute whatsoever, in the case of GPL they at least stop for a minute to scratch their heads and reconsider.
Some time ago mozilla.org announced its intent to seek relicensing of Mozilla code under a new licensing scheme that would address perceived incompatibilities of the Mozilla Public License (MPL) with the GNU General Public License (GPL) and GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL).
We are now implementing Mozilla relicensing using an MPL/GPL/LGPL triple license. This FAQ addresses various questions that might arise specifically about this relicensing effort. For additional information about the new Mozilla licensing scheme, see the mozilla.org License Policy.
… when is he going to swim “from Norway to the USA with only one stop-over for a cup of hot chocolate at his mother’s house in his home country, Iceland” as he said on april?
For those of you who don’t remember (or… didn’t really care): http://www.opera.com/pressreleases/en/2005/04/21/
:-))
Well the CEO did attempt the swim, but he had to abort it after he “heroically” rescued the guy following him on a raft after that guy nearly drowned.. because he didn’t know how to swim.
Sounds like a setup to me
I have used Opera on and off from v6 to the current v8.02 and I like it a lot. It is fast, reliable, and mostly does what I want. It favorably compares to Firefox and is a great alternate to the pervasive IE.
The only functional problem I’ve come across with Opera is how it renders, of all things, the http://www.tvguide.com web site. When selecting information on a program, it displays correctly. When you select another program, the window fails to load. I’ve adjusted the number of concurrent threads but it does not fix the issue. It is annoying but a small grief in the grand cosmic picture.
From an ease of use perspective, how mail is handled on Linux could be better. On every Linux distro I’ve run, it fails to properly detect the default mail client. The mail has to be customized manually which is kind of a pain. This problem does not come up on Windows.
I am sure these “features” will be corrected in future releases of Opera and that the browser will be a contender for a long time to come.
“we would actually like to see open standards prevail”
Then demonstrate this by making Opera open source, but that won’t happen any time soon will it? Probably not unless it loses popularity and/or stops being used at all, THEN, just like a happy birthday gift for attention, open sourcing as an option may be considered, maybe. Oh, wait, someone’s gonna troll me with ‘They said open standards not open source’. (this post contains opinions only)
Open Source != Open Standards
“Open Source != Open Standards”
No yuo omg wtf lol
Didn’t the parent poster end the post with: “Oh, wait, someone’s gonna troll me with ‘They said open standards not open source’.” but I guess you couldn’t READ THAT yourself.
tuckin fards mod me down and mod the trolls up or call me troll while i’m modded down so the person who called me troll can be modded up and they can all march on in the closed source posting mobiles waving their anti-gpl flags
Then demonstrate this by making Opera open source, but that won’t happen any time soon will it? Probably not unless it loses popularity and/or stops being used at all, THEN, just like a happy birthday gift for attention, open sourcing as an option may be considered, maybe. Oh, wait, someone’s gonna troll me with ‘They said open standards not open source’. (this post contains opinions only)
Why does something have to be Open Source to follow Open Standards. If Microsoft were to support OpenDocument in Office, then they would be supporting Open Standards without having to Open Source their code.
Just because both terms contain the word open does not make them the same. Is it really so difficult to understand people?
So As I understand it, if Opera was released under a dual license, I could either use it via the GPL license, or I could pay Opera $10,000 (or whatever the asking price is) for a license that would allow me to do whatever I want with it, including sell it?
I meant, sell it without releasing the source code.
I’ve been a supporter and occasional user of Opera since its release. However, I have just uninstalled it on both my WinXP and Linux boxes because I can’t get it to find/use my printer on Linux (all other apps can print to ‘Lp’ but not Opera) and its rendition of multi-column pages done with CSS is hopeless on both platforms.
Even IE-6 can get the rendering right (although it can’t print on Linux 😉 )
Peter
I don’t mind paying for good software, as soon as soon as it’s free in the sense that: it adhers to open standards, I can run it on whatever system I like, If I need to run it and I don’t have a license right there and then there is a version that I can use.
I spend a considerable amount of money on software, but only buy stuff that satisfies those cryteria.
I also use firefox quite a bit, mainly because of it’s web developer toolbar and the ritch text editing that some sites that I work on require
“I don’t mind paying for good software”
I donate to authors of good OPEN SOURCE software, I dislike the philosophies and motives behind closed source software, there’s NOTHING good about closed source for HUMANITY. Period.
“as soon as soon as it’s free in the sense that: it adhers to open standards, I can run it on whatever system I like, If I need to run it and I don’t have a license right there and then there is a version that I can use.”
Except that if software isn’t open source, it’s not free. If it’s closed source, it’s closed. Sure, it may run, but it’s not truly free.
“I spend a considerable amount of money on software, but only buy stuff that satisfies those cryteria.”
That’s dumb, I donate money to authors of free source software who deserve it for caring about humanity rather than trying to turn a buck from it. My money goes toward FREE philosophies. But of course, I actually CARE about something other than making myself happy with a purchase.
“I also use firefox quite a bit, mainly because of it’s web developer toolbar and the ritch text editing that some sites that I work on require”
Did you donate money towards the developers? Oh, that’s right, you probably didn’t PAY for it so there’s no money involved in that, right?
No wonder we’ve been fucked by closed source for so long.