Opera 5 Free... If You Want Commercials

Many of you wrote in to note that the latest version of Opera is now free... except for the part that it runs commercials while you browse. (The option still exists to buy the commercial free version if you like). The Linux version is still in a 4.x beta, and I'm unsure if this advertising thing will also be applied to the other platform. What do you guys think of ads in your software? Is it worth giving up your privacy for a free binary, or paying fifty bucks for the binary? Personally, I'll stick to mozilla.

Comments

Stick to Mozilla? let me buy a new computer first.

[Tridus]

Mozilla is all fine and dandy provided you have the serious hardware required to run it. Try running it on something like a Pentium 200. Its painful. At best. There has been a lot of talk in the Opera newsgroups (in which I'm a regular) about the adware version, without much real consenus on it. We do have some details on the adware implementation itself though. Here is the protocol they are using. We have information from Tollef (who works at Opera) about what information is logged by the ad server, apparently all it tracks is which ads have been shown to which client, and whatever personal information (which is totally optional) was put in by the user. It doesn't log IP addresses, email addresses, or anything of that nature. I haven't had a chance to download the browser yet, since it came out at 1am in my time zone. I do know that I should be able to use it without getting a system upgrade, which is more then I can say for shit like Mozilla.

Re:Internet junkbuster, here I come!

[drooling-dog]

You're disgusted by people who block ads, but you say it's become "second nature" for you to ignore them? What sense does that make? The revenue stream produced by these ads ultimately depends on their performance, and not on how many people allow them to be displayed on their screens. You're just blocking the ads one paddle further downstream, with your brain instead of your browser. If you don't buy, the ad revenue won't continue.

To really support this kind of free software, we should not only look at the ads, but (at least occasionally) buy whatever they're selling, whether we really want it or not! Maybe they could charge for the browser, and refund the price with your first purchase.

Good for web authors

[Bob Ince]

Opera were shooting themselves in the foot by not making a free version; webmasters need a copy to test their pages on, if not even more pages will be Opera-unfriendly and no-one will want to use Opera. Hopefully this will help.

I've been waiting for Opera to support DOM Core for ages, but their web page doesn't say whether they've done it. It could be they haven't changed much and this is just version 4.02 viewed through the wonder of version number bloat, I guess...

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Re:Good for web authors

[Masem]

IIRC, the Opera 4.x series was only HTML3.2/CSS1 compatible, though there were HTML4 and CSS2 features implemented but they refused to claim 100% adherence (unlike other browsers that say they are, but only support 50 to 90% of the spec). I remember the Opera people saying, when Opera 4 was announced, that Opera 5 would be the version with HTML4/CSS2 compatibility, regardless of the 4.x version number.

The only thing that would make opera perfect is the ability to run it outside the MDI interface on all platforms.

Re:Advertising in programs

[slashfucker]

Here's the timeline for you:

1. Some asshole who got his MBA out of a Post Toasties box writes a business plan: "We will provide people with free lunch, supported by banner impression and clickthrough revenues, and cross-marketing deals with online retailers."
2. MBA boy shops the business plan to coked out VC. VC says "This looks great, can you score me a dime bag by Friday too?"
3. VC firm pours cash down MBA boy's throat. MBA boy hires a bunch of kids, who got expelled from high school for hacking the principal's PC to make farting noises, to write Perl/Java/Visual Basic code to provide free lunch. The code is open source.
4. www.freelunch.com goes live. CmdrTaco posts a story about how it is proof that free stuff works. Hemos posts the story again 2 days later.
5. Thousands of people use and enjoy free lunch, but completely ignore the ad banners and cross-marketing links. 1.5 million impressions a day, 3 click throughs, one of which was an accident. (he was probably trying to punch the monkey) The VC guy wakes up covered in money, next to a dead hooker, with a terrible hangover.
6. An IPO is announced. VC firm gets pre-IPO stock, which repays their initial investment so they have more cash to support free breakfast and free dinner startups, and enough left over to buy crack rocks for all of San Francisco. Joe Sixpack invests his retirement fund in freelunch.com stock. MBA boy and the high school kids all buy solid platinum Ford Excursions.
7. freelunch.com has their first post-IPO earnings report. Server bills, payroll, and the ad budget for the $10,000,000 Super Bowl commercial with a man farting out the tune to "Tie a Yellow Ribbon" all add up to 600x the revenue brought in from ad impressions. CNNfn attributes this to "problems in the supply chain with freelunch.com's JIT business system."
8. Stock plummets, Joe Sixpack decides to buy more while the price is low, because "My friend has a computer, and he uses free lunch all the time." Stock soars.
9. Advertisers realize that nobody gives a shit for the ad banners. freelunch.com can't sell its ad inventory. They lower their asking price for impressions, and change from banner ads to pop-up windows. Closing the window counts as a clickthrough, and it pops up another window. Ad revenues soar, advertisers get shafted. MBA boy gets a nose ring, and is interviewed by Wired Magazine on "The New Free-conomy."
10. Users get fed up with clicking through 10,000 pop-up windows for free lunch when they could just pay for it. Besides, Microsoft gives you a tastier free lunch, although less nutritious, and you have to pay to sit down to eat it.
11. Stockholders vote MBA boy out of the CEO chair. He is replaced by a former Pepsi CEO. freelunch.com is branded as "the choice of a new generation," and through a cross marketing deal, free lunch is given away at Taco Bell, KFC and Pizza Hut to people who fill out a market survey, including name, address, social security number, income, and credit card numbers.
12. The data is securely stored online just in case a user wants to purchase something from freelunch.com's sponsors. Securely means it can be accessed by clicking on the link that says "Secure data, don't click here!" and entering the password: "password". Script kiddie finds out and mass-mails goatse.cx to all freelunch subscribers. Wired News does a story, when reached for comment the CEO says that "No private account data was compromised, but all freelunch.com users should probably cut up their credit cards. It's good to renew them every few months, anyway."
13. Stock has been steadily dropping. The CEO has to sell one of his 10 Bentleys; he just can't afford the gas. CNNfn attributes the drop to "low consumer confidence in the high tech sector." Joe Sixpack calls his broker.
14. One day, freelunch.com is replaced with an animated gif of a construction worker, and the message "Please excuse our dust! freelunch.com is being redesigned to serve you better!" The new CEO considers a subscription based model, a support based model, b2b, b2c, c2b, c2c, p2p, and a few other words he read in Fast Company.
15. Eventually he realizes that his retirement is on the line, and jumps ship, albeit with a $20,000,000 performance bonus, 12 months vacation before he leaves, and severance. Somehow it works out that Mr. CEO runs freelunch.com into the ground, and the company buys him a dozen vacation homes around the world, including an apartment aboard the International Space Station.
16. One of the high school kids takes over as interim CEO. AOL/Time Warner convinces him to sell the freelunch.com technology by offering him Pokemon cards. freelunch.com stock is converted to AOL/TW, dollar for dollar, which means the entire market capitalization of freelunch.com is worth 13 shares of AOL/TW.

Sorry if that was a bit long-winded, but I think I covered it all.

The winners in this game are the VCs, who chuck money at startups like it's nothing, and cover their losses through big hype IPOs. Also, the CEOs and "visionaries" that come up with the startups must manage to squirrel a little away for retirement, not to mention the godlike reputation they get for "breaking all the rules." The investment banks that broker the IPOs make out pretty well too, on the near-asymptotic curve that peaks roughly 2 seconds after an IPO, and slowly rolls downhill.

The main loser is Joe Sixpack, the hardworking, taxpaying investor who takes a bath because he doesn't know to get out of the stock while the getting's good. But it's probably his fault, since he doesn't really know enough about lunch to invest in it. He should know better than to listen to press releases and earnings reports on technology. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

Thank you for your time, cunt.

Love,
Slashfucker

Internet junkbuster, here I come!

[Improv]

This is awesome! With just a bit of netstat and
some editing of my /etc/junklist, I guess I
could get a free small browser... well, if I
wanted it anyhow. I'll probably at least try it
and see if I like it.

To advertisers of the world: I will not see your
advertisements anymore, and will be doing my best
to free others as well. http://www.junkbusters.org

Free+Ads a minus? I think not.

[Trinition]

Opera is a great browser. I'm using 4.02 (for Windows, shhh!) to write this reply right now. It has a number of features that I love, like the MDI interface, zooming web pages, and the fact that if it crashes, it doesn't necessarily take Windows with it. I also like that when I re-open Opera, it remembers the last web pages I had open (a-la multiple default home pages).

In my opinion, the big thing holding Opera back was that you had to pay for it. I showed it to a number of friends who agreed they'd use it if it weren't for the cost. After all, Netscape and IE were both free.

However, Opera is a Norwegian company and probably didn't have as much money in the coffers as Netscape and certainly not Microsoft. How could they offer it for free? Well, by golly, free via ads is the next best thing.

Personally, my concern is with the bandwidth those ads might consume. I've disabled the ads in AIM just because I dont want anything dirtying my bandwidth without my permission, no matter how small it might be.

Re:Something's amiss with your ideals.

[pointym5]

Chances are that if you're down with non-free software on Linux, then you only use Linux because you have some irrational dislike of Bill Gates. That's pathetic.

Entertaining and Slashdot-culturally-correct as it may be to spew righteous flameage at a strawman, that statement is just plain stupid. I'd say chances are most people who use Linux do so because they like it.

Idealistic endeavors like the Free Software Movement should be things that believers adopt for their own personal reasons. Browbeating other people for not sharing your ideals is just plain wrong-headed. If you believe in Free Software, great. Write some. Make it so compelling that it'll dominate its space and drive out non-free competition.

What we don't need is this stupid Free Software jihad mentality.

This is a failed business model

[ajs]

The free software/hardware, as long as you take the adds model has failed. Every company that tried it either had to adopt a different model or went out of business. See ZapMe for an example. The problem is that in order for this to make sense one of two things has to happen: advertisers need to trust your medium (e.g. TV) or you need to have millions of viewers (which is how TV got where it is).

Opera has neither.

On privacy

[American AC in Paris]

Is it worth giving up your privacy for a free binary, or paying fifty bucks for the binary?

I'd argue that if you want to use Opera for free, it is well worth giving up a small slice of one's privacy in return. I can think of several others, right off the top of my head:

• Giving up one's privacy for the sake of getting to and from the grocery store;
• Giving up one's privacy to let light stream into your house through the window;
• Giving up one's privacy to go to the hospital and have that broken leg set in a cast;
• Giving up one's privacy by walking across the street to greet your new neighbor;
• Giving up one's privacy to enjoy a night at the bar with a group of good friends...

The list goes on. Taco, you should know more than any of us that absolute privacy is a myth. You're famous amongst geeks, and yet I rarely (if ever) hear you weigh the success of Slashdot against the loss of privacy it has caused you. It is quite common for one's privacy to be the lesser consideration in a decision, and if you want to use Opera for free, then sacrificing a sliver of your privacy to do so legitimately is not that great of a concern. Of course, you could always pay full price or pirate the full version to protect your privacy, or simply stick to Mozilla, as I suspect you will. (Personally, I agree--though it's no major sacrifice to give up that privacy, I'm not keen on using an app with integrated advertising when a completely free alternative exists...)

$ man reality

Re:Something's amiss with your ideals.

[mattdm]

Hmmm. This sure sounds like a troll, but I'll bite.

Some of us just want software that doesn't suck. Open source is overall a superior method of getting there, but often closed methods produce pretty good stuff too. If a closed-source program sucks less than the alternatives, I don't have a moral problem with using it. I'll support the development of better open-source choices, but I won't feel bad about using something else until they're ready -- forever, if that's the way it turns out. And I certainly won't bash someone else for their choice.

Games are a good example of something that seems to work very well with a closed-source develpment process. I've purchased several games from Loki, and I'm really happy with them. Loki does a great job of supporting good and useful open-source game-infrastructure projects, and that makes me happy. I don't see a reason to go demanding the source to Sim City.

On the browser front, for whatever its worth, I still think Opera sucks -- fast and light is nice, but there's no attention to good interface design. So, for whatever its flaws, I'm posting this from a copy of Mozilla I built from CVS. I'm glad I have this option, but if you like Opera better, fine with me.

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Remembering Cable

[Shotgun]

When cable first came out in the '80's it was ad free, but the cost was prohibitive to most of us. Over time, the monthly rate had dropped, but now it seems that even the premium channels have as much commercialization as broadcast TV did in the '80's. Watching broadcast TV is a waste of time in the US now, unless you like to watch commercials.

I see a pattern, and I see that pattern affecting software. Advertisers will pay to have software developed, and people will be more than happy to use the software for 'free'.

**not** spyware! read here for the **truth**

[ChristTrekker]

There is no privacy infringement in Opera 5! This comes straight from Tollef at Opera, the guy "in the know" about the Linux port. He says if Opera puts out spyware, he and a good deal of other people he knows will leave Opera.

OK, that said...I'm using my karma bonus (which I rarely do) so maybe this will get noticed. Opera is a good browser, and, I think, a good company. I registered as an alpha/beta tester for their Mac port, and have been following Opera for over two years now. I've been reading the opera.* NGs for the past week as info about Opera 5 has been leaking out. I know what I'm talking about.

The ads are served independently of the web page. They are part of the UI. They don't tell anybody what you were looking at. They only report if the ad was clicked. You get to customize the ads you see...it's not based on your browsing patterns. Read the privacy policy if you're still not convinced. (That means you, CmdrTaco.)

If you like Opera, you'll pay the $39 to register it and remove the ads. However, a free version is a great way for designers to test with more browsers, in particular, a very compliant browser. I see this as a good thing. If you're really paranoid, then fine, don't use it.

Posted with Opera 5.