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Opera Offers Free Licenses For Educational Use
Opera Watch writes "Opera Software today announced that it would offer free licenses to higher education institutions. This is a change from the previous cost of $1000 (US) for unlimited licenses. It remains to be seen, however, whether Opera will allow schools to give standard Opera licenses to students to use on personal computers/laptops within campus at no additional cost, that came with the $1000 license fee. This comes after a respected university advised its students not to use Internet Explorer, for its lack of security. Opera Software said they are doing so in an effort to meet the student and university need for security on the Internet."
not a bad idea. A lot of people will learn the value of a safe browser AND will realise there are more (better?) alternatives than just firefox/mozilla
Ahhh sheesh would you just get over yourself, eh? It is a commercial company, no one blames them for not opening its source code... instead of bitching about no source code, puh-lease, be a little happy about this ...
Actully, what does Firefox do better than Opera? Yeah, ads or paying for software is not as nice as free, speech or beer, but what makes you think Firefox is better? As far as I can tell, all Firefox does is implement the good ideas that Opera develops. So why not reward the guys for their good work?
Ah, a prototypical /. reaction. Some company does something nice, like offers free licenses to schools, and what's the first post? Criticism for not going far enough.
It would sure be nice if everything were free, source were available, nothing had bugs, and everyone got woken up by a blowjob, but the world just doesn't work that way.
We should be congratulating those companies that look beyond their immediate bottom line to try and make the world a better place, even if it is a loss-leading marketing expense like giving browsers to students.
Anyone else think this is clever, btw? Students like free things, so they'll take Opera up on this, and some of them will like it. Then, when they go to the real world, they'll ber ready to convince their company to drop IE and switch to... well, probably Firefox since it's free.
Now they have made some inroads in the embedded market, but it looks like the Mozilla team has their sites set on this as well. My prediction is the same will apply (why pay when you can get it for free), except the gap between Opera and Mozilla has closed significantly.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
No one said they were making Opera "Free". It says they are offering "free" licenses to universities and such. It seems pretty obvious to me that "free" in this instance is referring to the pre-existing license that they usually charge for, that being the license to USE the software. This isn't even related to GPL as it's an end-user license to use the software. If you don't like it, by all means go ahead and don't use it. I don't think you qualify anyway since you aren't a university or higher eduction institution.
The Farewell Tour II
Couldn't have said it better myself brother. I would have expected the Opera folks to use the muzzy description "open" for their offering instead of the more controvercial (on this forum anyway) term "free". In Opera all I see is the whip hand of proprietary software. No thanks.
an ill wind that blows no good
It's be best for Opera to allow schools to distribute it to their students. It's very possible that Universities may start forbidding IE usage, and if Opera's available to the students too, they may just get lifelong users. After all you get used to a program after 4+ years of use.
Now I'm not saying Firefox isn't a terrific browser (because it is), but when someone suggests a browser that isn't IE or Firefox, why is there an uproar? You may think Honda (Firefox) makes the best vehicle, but does that mean Toyota (Opera) vehicles shouldn't be on the road?
Keeping with that analogy, the oil burning, cloud spewing, Gremlin with brakes that don't work (IE), *should* be off the road.
Earn a free iRiver
Why should RMS have to redefine what free means to him and what a lot of people of recognized by the meaning free? Wouldn't it make more sense for people touting that their software is free to put the actual meaning in to it by saying it may be free but you have give up your soul.
For personal preference I use Konqueror, but I have yet to see an opera-beating browser on windows, even with the ads.
I am trolling
Geesh, I was just going to do some moderating; but, I have to respond.
/. wah! why are you so critical wah! they're a commercial company wah! get over yourself ... WAH! WAH! WAH!"
/. I'd be one of the first saying, "Hey, you should use Opera. It's sweet!" and such.
There are several replies to this post with the "wah! typical
Look, nowhere in this post did he bitch about Opera. He said he desires to keep using as much "really free" software as possible... and simply, "thanks but no thanks" and frankly never did he say Opera sucks or FSCK Opera! He never even suggested they should open source their product.
Listen, I loved the Opera browser. I'm sure it's still wonderful. But it is precisely this reason that I no longer use it.
I bought and paid for Opera. I even asked my wife for a new license for Christmas a few years back...and she got it for me. I was a huge Opera fanboy. Whenever some story about browsers came up on
But, at some point I realized that as cool as Opera is, and as much as I think the company is a fine company, it's still not software that is terribly concerned with freedom. And there are two perfectly acceptable (if not arguably better in some ways) browsers that are. Opera wants to give gratis licenses to schools, good on them. But any school that takes that gift should look at it for what it is and weigh carefully their options. Firefox is a damn fine browser on par with Opera in most ways that the majority of their users would need...and it's not just gratis, it's free. If Opera goes under, what then?
To me, Opera and Mozilla/Firefox...it's like six of one, half-a-dozen of another. And functionality (for my concern) being equal, I choose to use Mozilla/Firefox now. Because they're free, not because they're gratis. And I want to support this.
I find it amazing somebody points out that he makes the same choice on slashdot (of all places) and not only gets flack about it but gets modded down for it.
Anomaly...does not compute.
Well, I'll leave it to the Opera zealots to post lists of features, but i'll give only one reason.
It has the most responsive UI I have seen in a graphical program. It's the vi of browsers; tremendously powerful, yet small and nimble. And its a class apart on under-specced machines - Firefox doesnt even compare.
I have used the latest versions of firefox, Maxthon etc.. I'm not switching from Opera.
Is too. For example, Opera 7+ supports CSS3 Media Queries. Firefox doesn't. Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah.^-^
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
Keep the number of tabs down, and you should be fine. Opera's main problem is that over time it starts freezing, but then unfreezes. Close it out, and restart, and you should be fine.
Now, as for 8.0b1, it has NASTY memory leaks, especially if you install over a 7.6 Preview. However, GMail only works with 7.6 previews and 8.0b1.
Has everybody on Slashdot lost all perspective on how much of the software out there gets made? Some guy in a basement somewhere, usually Norway or Denmark, starts coding up something. Other people respond to the idea, and encourage them. They polish it and release it as shareware, which people decry as buggy junk. They then get more people, polish it up as much as they can, and the public starts to respond. They get more funding, hire more people, and repeat until you have a nice little independent company owned by a coder with an idea and lots of work ethic.
The people work on the software full-time because they don't have to have a primary job. Working on the software is their job. And isn't that what most people want to do?
I see a ton posts here about "F*ck them, they should have made it Open Source and looked for other ways to make money." What would be the point of that? That's saying they should have given up on the browser and done something else. They're doing something nobody thought possible: Surviving selling an independent browser in a hotly contested market. They're an independent company taking on a behemoth on their terms and shaking things up in the process. Give up on the fanboyisms and get a little perspective on what they've done.
I hate to break your illusions, but a lot of the development effort (and all of the full-time coders) for the Mozilla / Firefox rendering effort has been funded by large non-free software corporations. GASP Oh the horrors!
I'm not saying that free software is good or bad or dead. But I am saying that the software ecosystem is a lot more complicated than the pundits here are making it out to be. Stop taking such a simplistic view of things, it makes it harder for me to convince people that the OSS movement isn't a bunch of raving loonies. I had to live with an Access database for several months last time that happened.
The ______ Agenda
BULLSHIT!
I love open source, use it, enjoy it, support it (take time out of busy day to report firefox bugs, and donated money) and I cheer RMS on and on....
But your little quote is bullshit. I think what they are doing is great. Free = don't pay $ so yes, it IS free.
If Mercedes gave you a car for free, but said "don't open the engine hood at all, otherwise drive the car as much as you want" would you turn the car down and say the car isn't free?
Free software does NOT have to come with enough rights that you can do what you want with the code. Is that ideal? Yes. Is that a better thing? Yes. But don't bash companies for giving things away for free like this, that's crazy.
You probrably also think IBM allowing open source programmers use 500+ patents is a bad thing, since it's less than %1 of their patent portfolio. WTF?!?! It's a start, and a great one, and when MS wants to patent FAT to lock everyone out, the IBM move is nothing short of fantastic.
Don't take pictures of RMS playing his flute in front of a butterfly picture too literal. The world does not work that way. There are levels of free, levels of good or bad, not everything is black and white. I see the move Opera is making as nothing short of fantastic.
Well, so far I cannot remember a vuneralbility in Opera that allows attackers write access to your drive, or allow arbitrary code execution.
The recent vunerabilities have been Java issues(really Sun's issue, and affects all browsers) and phishing issues. AFAIK fixed now.
Also, unlike IE, Opera doesn't integrate into the file system - file:// links fail from websites.
Furthermore, Opera doesn't run ActiveX, and javascript is very sandboxed.
Opera also goes beyond firefox in not allowing third party extensions. This is two edged, one the one side, it limits somewhat what the browser possibly could do, but it also prevents many spyware browser toolbars etc... that are prevelant in IE, and starting to show up for FF.
It also only leaves one point of trust, that of Opera software - so you don't have to worry about malicious extension writers, or the security of their sites...
Opera, Proxomitron-Grypen,GPG 0x0A1C6EE3
I find it amazing somebody points out that he makes the same choice on slashdot (of all places) and not only gets flack about it but gets modded down for it.
I think the moderation was done not because of his software preference, not because of which software development model he supported, but because of the (in my opinion as well) completely redundant rambling on about the GPL, what it implies, and how Opera shouldn't be called free software. I quote:
Software isn't free unless you have specific rights over the source code to basically do what you want with the code.
While I think many here believe the word "free" can have multiple meanings, one of them being "gratis".
That's why I think he was modded down, since some saw that statement as a flamebait.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!