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Microsoft Behind $12M Opera Settlement
An anonymous reader writes "According to CNET it has been confirmed that Microsoft is behind the $12 million dollar payment to Opera (speculated earlier here). The payment was to avoid legal action over interoperability issues with Opera's web browser and Microsoft's MSN portal.
On at least three separate occasions, Opera has accused Microsoft of deliberately breaking interoperability between its MSN Web portal and various versions of the Opera browser--charges that the software giant has repeatedly denied."
Microsoft was purposely serving up broken style sheets for Opera; changing the user agent to something other that Opera would cause MSN to render correctly. For more on that, see the Opera article Why doesn't MSN work with Opera?
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As this article in BusinessWeek points out, Microsoft is trying to settle and partner rather than fight in court.
This all comes out of petty cash for them. They chalk it up as a cost of doing business. If it really bugs ya, don't use any of their buggy, security-hole-laden POS software.
what innovation?
tabed browsing, opera.
gesturing, opera.
Je ne parle pas francais.
No, that's a different thing entirely. Windows Update uses ActiveX controls to work out what you need and those are only compatible with IE, as I'm sure you know. There's no legal precident saying they must rewrite code if another browser doesn't support it.
What they did to Opera was deliberately send broken code in order to make it appear that the browser was faulty. The code sent to IE worked fine in Opera but MS went out of their way to alter that code when sending it to Opera. If you went to MSN using a IE5 browser agent string in Opera it would've worked fine. If you went to Windows Update using that same browser agent string in Mozilla you wouldn't get an error but I very much doubt that the site would work.
If they settle, they're guilty. Thats how the public sees it and in truth that's the way I see it.
So what that there is a clause in there. If they pay money out, then they have something to hide, and they're only paying it off so when they lose in court, it will be MUCH more than the payoff. So yes, it would be cheaper than being found guilty.
If they WERE right, they could take it all the way to court knowing that they would win...and then having the other side pay the court costs. MS didn't do this, they knew they were wrong and GUILTY so they decided to pay their way out...again.
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
Because I live in Australia, and my lack of sleep stops me from converting currency automatically. 800 Million Australian is abut 550 Million Euros
But this is not the only case of bad journalism. Another example:
This is just wrong. Opera isn't just "looking to move past the PC". They have been doing this for years. Just a quick look on opera.com shows press releases about this back in 2000. In 2001, the Sharp Zaurus had Opera on it.Now, I am not saying that it cannot possibly be Microsoft. It probably is. But this is pure speculation, and CNET is portraying it as fact. And they seem to focus on one single site, rather than the on-going problems with Opera and Microsoft sites due to browser sniffing and singling out Opera, and Microsoft's blatant lies about Opera in the press.
Clever signature text goes here.
Excerpt from Opera's privacy policy.
In fact, Opera is an exemplary company, and even allows their developers to interact and answer questions on USENET and other forums. I've been a registered user of Opera for some time now, and I've always been amazed by their level of customer support and service.I'm not sure what you mean by a sensible business model. It is possible to BUY the product, as well as using a free version (with advertising). I guess "sensible business model" according to some regulars here mean "Give it away for free, and buy lots of lottery tickets or hope some investor will bail you out", but that model actually stopped working 4 years ago.
Opera actually makes money.
What MS is doing is not fine. They are detecting that you are using Opera and making Opera look bad by serving it bad code. It is not "perfectly legit" at all.
Clever signature text goes here.
Apparently, you haven't heard of the Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer, which tells you exactly which updates you need. In fact, it tells you more than Windows Update can.
You have two options in the free version of Opera:
A) Relevant text ads, using Google Adsense. Google needs to know which site you're visiting.
B) Generic banner ads.
How to select ad model:
1. In Opera, go to File/Preferences/Advertising.
2. Put one hand on the top of your head.
3. If the fingers on the hand mentioned in instruction 2 can feel the presence of tinfoil, select ad model B
4. If not, choose model A
As for your comments about conspiracy theories, this isn't just something which has happened once. Opera has been specifically detected and served broken code on several occasions on MSN.com, and lately on MSNBC.com. In addition to this, a Microsoft spokesperson lied about Opera to the media.
You are criticizing others for assuming too much, yet you don't even bother to inform yourself on the matter.
This isn't just one case of a bad style sheet on MSN. This is something which has repeated itself over and over.
Clever signature text goes here.
Opera obviously does support XHTML, and issued a press release in XHTML which points out Microsoft's lie.
This and other lies from Microsoft are exposed in an Opera press release.
Clever signature text goes here.
Microsoft's lies are covered in this press release from Opera.
Clever signature text goes here.
Umm no. Your facts are simply incorrect.
Opera was being sent a different style sheet, as well as a different html file, than IE or Netscape. This style sheet was not a generic one for non-IE browsers, as was verified to by using wget with a faked user-agent field. There were three style sheets, one for Netscape only, one for Opera only, and one for all other browsers. So Opera was definately specifically targetted with this. And the files sent to Opera contained commands to force them to layout improperly, whereas the generic files sent to IE and unknown browsers displayed just fine in Opera.
You can see screenshots and a detailed explanation of what was happening here.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Firstly Opera are a major player in the fast-growing mobile browser sector. They are in partnership with some of the biggest manufacturers, such as Nokia, IBM, Sony Ericsson, Kyocera, Sharp and Psion. Opera's small-screen rendering technology is far more advanced than anything Microsoft have, and they know it. Opera are also a powerful voice on the W3C committee (it was an Opera employee who came up with the idea of CSS) and are committed to web standards.
As well as offering true cross-platform support (LINUX, Mac, Windows, Solaris, OS/2, Symbian) Opera is also far more feature rich than anything Microsoft have. If you think Opera aren't a potential threat to Microsoft then you are incredibly naive.
I haven't noticed a need for CSS2 and PNG
CSS 2 is needed for presentation. The alternative is hideous presentational HTML, which is limiting in all sorts of different ways.
PNG is needed because it's the only widespread (in web terms) image format that includes an alpha channel, without which is impossible or very difficult to create many nice visual effects on websites.
SVG comes via a plugin. I don't see why you think that MS should support it natively.
By that reasoning, Microsoft should just implement HTML and leave JPEG, GIF, PNG, CSS, Javascript etc support up to everyone else. Vector graphics are incredibly useful and they should be implemented in the browser.
How many websites out there use it?
Who is going to use it when virtually nobody will see it? Browser support has to come first.
Only one that I use regularly and it's not exactly something that 99.9% of others will use.
Then you clearly aren't familiar with SVG or possibly web development. Vector graphics would improve plenty of websites.
Should MS be forced to integrate Flash into the browser just because some websites use it
First of all, who is talking about forcing anybody to do anything?
Microsoft should implement established specifications that other browser vendors have implemented so that Internet Explorer's large market share doesn't cripple web development. Right now, the primary problem is CSS 2 support, but next year it will probably be SVG support.
you would all go fucking ballistic if they took Shockwave over to do so
Who is the "you all" you are talking to?
CSS2 makes web design a whole lot easier. You can properly separate content and presentation. Have the content generated in semantic markup by a script and then just change the CSS when you need to change the presentation.
PNG is a nice lossless image format. It is more flexible than GIF and is not encumbered by patents (The GIF patent is still valid in some countries). In a browser that properly supports it, PNG allows a full alpha channel, which makes it possible to do some very nice effects.
One of the best things about SVG is that it's XML, and so is part of you pages DOM. You can put the SVG directly into XHTML, and even control it from Javascript (or any other scripting mechanism that supports DOM). This makes it an incredibly flexible tool. If you render SVG using the Adobe plugin then the SVG content does not appear within the DOM tree.
How many websites out there use it? Only one that I use regularly and it's not exactly something that 99.9% of others will use.
No, most websites don't use it because if they did then IE users would not be able to view their site.
Should MS be forced to integrate Flash into the browser just because some websites use it (you would all go fucking ballistic if they took Shockwave over to do so)?
No. Flash is proprietary. CSS2 and SVG, however, are W3C standards and should be supported by any browser.
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I just can't put my finger on what they're up to...
I have two words to answer your question.
Software Patents
A few more words...
Eben Moglen spoke at Harvard in February regarding not just SCO, but the future direction of the IT industry at large.
He said that today the battle is over copyright. In five years the battle will be over software patents. And in ten years the battle will shift to that of bandwidth. Of ensuring that everyone has access to bandwidth as easily as they do electricity, so that all may share in the information that is available.
My dates may be slightly off, but you can see the coming progression of battlefields.
Microsoft engages in illegal and immoral behavior. But they are not stupid. They are preparing for the next war, which will be software patents.
The transcript of Eben Moglen's speech can be viewed here from Groklaw and the video of his speech can be viewed here from Harvard. (Sorry, it's in Real Media format)
If you haven't seen that speech, you should. To call it enlightening is to do it a disservice.
- Neil Wehneman
P.S. I realize I use battle and war imagery a lot in this post, but quite frankly I believe the stakes are that high. Imagine if the printing press revolution had fallen to the entrenched interests of the day. We are now in the same situation, only with digital information.
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