Opera Free as in Beer

nekura writes "Just last month, Opera was celebrating their 10 year anniversary by giving away free registration codes; now they've trumped that by offering Opera for free. Quoth their site, 'Opera has removed the banners, found within our browser, and the licensing fee. Opera's growth, due to tremendous worldwide customer support, has made todays milestone an achievable goal. Premium support is available.' Anyone who was on the verge of switching before now has virtually no reason not to."

Comments

Good

[Metasquares]

They had no hope of competing with Firefox and IE, despite the merits of their browser, so long as they charged for it while the other two were free.

Re:Good

[varmittang]

I'm just wondering how they are going to make money now since the banners were supporting the freebees and the subscribtion or whatever for the paying customers. Are they going to do a thing where you have to pay for adding on personnal extentions to Opera or something?

re: good

[ed.han]

i've been using opera for several years now and prefer it to firefox, mainly b/c it's got a smaller resource footprint than either IE or firefox, IMX, and it does (again IMX) render pages faster than either IE or firefox. i've heard that said by others who've compared browsers as well. to me, that makes the banner ads not so bad. and is it really credible to dis banner ads considering that there's a banner ad on the this very site? :>

ed

Re:Good

[Cyn]

I don't think Opera was making much money with their free desktop browser anyway.

Their main profits are from embedded devices (PDAs and the like) that buy licenses to use their browser, because it's fast and small and has good support of all the desired features these days.

Course, I haven't seen a recent version of Netfront - they may be losing ground to them, or they may still be way ahead...

Re:Good

[R.D.Olivaw]

yep open-source kills another business.

I would like to mention that the first free browser was from a commercial company and was intended to kill another business.

worth mentioning as well is the fact that the opera business is not dead. They just realised that giving the browser for free would increase their userbase and by extension other revenue streams.

I dub thee 'sir troll'

Re:Good

[Bogtha]

They had no hope of competing with Firefox and IE, despite the merits of their browser, so long as they charged for it while the other two were free.

People have been saying the same thing for as long as Opera has been around - "nobody will pay when the competition's free!" And yet they've managed to stay in business for the past ten years. Maybe people are willing to pay for quality software even if there's a cheaper alternative.

Re:Good

[loconet]

Make no mistake, IE is not free. It is as free as the bread they serve you at restaurants (stale, cold, moldy bread at that).

Re:Good

[Echnin]

Most of those they get paid for, yes. That's why editing search.ini to add your own search engines is not an officially supported feature even though it's easy to do. There's even a standalone program to do it. Where's the Firefox extension that does this, and also lets me search from the address bar by adding a short name as a prefix to the search word (for example, "i britney spears" will open a Google Image Search for Britney Spears, or "je bukkorosu" will search for the word "bukkorosu" in a Japanese-English online dictionary). Hm. Someone should code that extension if it doesn't exist.

Re:Good

[NDPTAL85]

The profit doesn't come from the desktop browser so yes it is a failed business model. Without their mobile sales they would have gone out of business a long time ago.

Re:Good

[Ryosen]

Did you try doing that? I'm guessing that you didn't.

Typing "g firefox" as you suggested lands me on http://firefox.g.hatena.ne.jp/popona/ <-- don't click on it

If Firefox is searching google from the address bar, then it is going to the "I Feel Lucky" option.

Opera, by comparison, just does a regular search, showing the results in the main window. Furthermore, Opera supports a number of search engines in this manner, having different codes for each one and is extensible, too.

I had been a huge fan of Opera since I discovered it in 1995. I happily tolerated the rigid CSS implementation that would make it "incompatible" with other sites designed with IE's bugginess and broken features in mind. I've since left Opera for Firefox with nary a look back. I only wish that a search extension similar to Opera's would be made available. I'm not sure, however, that an extension can intercept requests from the address bar (just glanced over the API - I might be wrong about that).

It's unfortunate that Opera has to go free. They have a great product. They're just in the wrong market. Here's hoping that they don't suffer the same fate as Netscape.

Re:Good

[Rits]

Without the desktop browser and a couple of million users, Opera would not have been able to create the mobile version it has now in the first place. Opera is better than other mobile browsers in getting as much of the real web onto the small screen as will fit.

Re:Good

[WhiteWolf666]

Yeah, I have a feeling there new business model is:

A) Make money off embedded devices
B) Provide 'premium' support to large corporations who are willing to switch to Opera for their default browser. Customize the browser based upon the corporations needs.

No reason? I think not.

[rockclimber]

Anyone who was on the verge of switching before now have virtually no reason not to.

Except those who want free as in speech.

Re:No reason? I think not.

[poptones]

What are you talking about? The fact you HAD the source code to the firefox browser allowed you to solve the problem within your company with no dependance upon anyone else. Whether or not the Firefox developers moved your patch into the distribution, you still had the problem solved within your infrastructure because you were able to patch Firefox yourself.

Open source does not mean the project leaders will solve every problem for the asking. Open source means you have the freedom and the information required to solve the problem yourself.

Re:No reason? I think not.

[TheRealMindChild]

What if this on a website that clients use? It is a lot easier to say "Use the latest browers" than "If you want to use firefox, you have to use this custom built version I made so it would be compatible"?

Re:No reason? I think not.

[springbox]

The web site's probably designed poorly if you need to say those things.

Re:No reason? I think not.

[Bogtha]

Whether or not the Firefox developers moved your patch into the distribution, you still had the problem solved within your infrastructure because you were able to patch Firefox yourself.

That's a distinctly sub-optimal solution. What happens when the next version of Firefox is released? Is he supposed to make the changes to the new version too? And after that? Is he supposed to maintain a separate fork for as long as he needs this feature?

Open source does not mean the project leaders will solve every problem for the asking.

No, but there's at least a reasonable expectation that they'll apply a patch that adds a missing feature.

Re:No reason? I think not.

[Anonymous Coward]

which is always a bullshit argument; finding/documenting bugs is easy, but I don't have the time, resources, or knowledge to fix the bugs I find. I'll switch to whatever product will fix them for me, even if that means non open source.

Re:No reason? I think not.

[Jugalator]

Open source means you have the freedom and the information required to solve the problem yourself.

If you're a developer with deep insight in the Mozilla codebase.

Re:No reason? I think not.

[FireFury03]

What if this on a website that clients use? It is a lot easier to say "Use the latest browers" than "If you want to use firefox, you have to use this custom built version I made so it would be compatible"?

Sorry, if you need to use a bleeding edge browser to view a public web site then that site is essentially broken - you need to provide support to browsers at least a year or so old if you want the site reachable to the masses.

Next Step

[someguy456]

Obviously Opera has realized that a browser with a cost can no longer survive in this post-2000 market. However, I wonder how long it will take until they open source it?

Re:Next Step

[sH4RD]

Never, as long as Opera still makes it's real money on mobile phones powered by the Opera engine.

Re:Next Step

[MosesJones]

How about "Never"... Opera actually make a PROFIT out of their browser business.. which is certainly better than "survival". Their main profit comes from their device platform but some people are indeed willing to pay for a better quality browser.

Opera is much better, and quicker, to use than either of the other popular browsers out there, and some organisations will continue to pay for Opera based on that responsiveness and security. More often people will pay for the mobile browser however. If there is common code between the two then Opera would be releasing the crown jewels for free and would cease to be a VIABLE company.

Open Source is NOT always the only answer, some people have to make a living.

Can someone please explain to me...

[Conspiracy_Of_Doves]

the advantages of using Opera over Firefox?

Re:Can someone please explain to me...

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, we get it, you're a Firefox fanboy. Even though every single "innovation" in Firefox was stolen from Opera, which runs much much faster, takes half the memory, and is only a 5MB download.

You're illogical obsession with Firefox despite superior alternatives seems to be the hallmark of Slashdot. "Firefox, Firefox, Firefox, Firefox" is all anyone says. Never mind all the rampant security holes, memory leaks, and bloated slowdown.

Great News for Standards Compliance

[stinerman]

I'm certainly glad that they are doing this even though I don't plan to use Opera in the near future. More alternatives will push web developers to use standards instead of just coding for IE.

Re:Great News for Standards Compliance

[morcego]

I'm not sure.

I have a feeling that a free-Opera will hurt Firefox's marketshare more than it will hurt IE's.

And vice versa

[Guspaz]

Anyone who was on the verge of switching before now have virtually no reason not to.

And anyone who wasn't on the verge of switching has virtually no reason to do so. I mean, this is all well and good, but Firefox is working rather nicely, why should I switch to Opera? How is Opera going to make my browsing experience better in a way that cannot be replicated via Firefox extensions? And how will Opera provide to me the functionality that I have via Firefox extensions that isn't part of Opera?

Re:And vice versa

[real_smiff]

hello? a browser that doesn't use 200MB RAM, 200MB VM, sometimes take minutes to restore and requires periodic restarts to get these numbers down? and is fast on slow computers. as a >1 year firefox user and advocate, seeing that firefox 1.5b hasnt really fixed these problems, i'll be trying Opera again now its free & advert free... sorry, but my time is more important than The Cause ultimately. Maybe firefox is ok for people who don't visit that many sites, or who restart often the browser/computer often, but i've been through every option i can think of and firefox still isnt "fast" or "light" for me. its also more friendly for computer-inexperienced users, so i may be advocating it for everyone soon. if so i will not be flaming firefox, just learning about Opera, and trying firefox again in the future to see how its going.

Re:And vice versa

[milimetric]

"How is Opera going to make my browsing experience better in a way that cannot be replicated via Firefox extensions?"

It's simple, I think that if you have to use extensions, the whole point of Firefox has been lost. I have one extension on my Firefox browser which I've been using since 0.7 and that's the download extension cause I hate the default Firefox download thingy. Firefox is a streamlined, beautifully simple browser and it's open source. However, if you're into all those extensions like mouse gestures, cool display of all your tabs at once, web developer, image disabling, voice commands, and so much much more, there has never been any question that Opera does all that stuff way way better. For example, when you Ctrl+Scroll on your page in Opera, EVERYTHING is resized including pictures and flash animations.

The second point is stability. Firefox crashes when you open up too many tabs at the same time and then change your screen resolution. Opera doesn't. As a matter of fact, I haven't been able to do anything that crashes Opera.

I'd say if you have more than 2 or 3 extensions in Firefox, you should Give Opera a try, you might fall in love with it. I personally use both for different reasons.

Opera

[CastrTroy]

Opera is a really good web browser. It is fast, renders most pages really well, and has a good UI. However, the spot where FireFox beats it, is in the Extensions department. Extensions are what makes firefox the best browser out there. The Web Developer extension makes web development a breeze, and FlashBlock makes sure I don't have any animations hogging my CPU cycles unless I want to. Oh, and the Javascript Debugger is the best tool ever. It's not the best debugger, and ironically, is kind of buggy itself, but, it has saved me hours of infesting my code with alerts() in order to find out the problem.

One question:

[hummassa]

was the CSS feature in question a standard CSS feature, or something non-standard your company used from IE?

Words

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who was on the verge of switching before now have virtually no reason not to.

Except those who want free as in speech.

Those who want free as in speech wasn't on the verge of switching before.

Re:Future development

[bigman2003]

You make a very good point at the end....

Nothing brings out the real jerks like taking a few dollars from them. Some people really do believe that when they are purchasing software that they are not just buying what you currently offer, but that they have a right to every possible upgrade for the next 10 years. And if you don't deliver, then they will go on and on about the $35 they spent 'for this piece of crap.'

That is where the software subscription comes in. A lot of people (especially here on Slashdot) don't like the idea of the subscription model. But, they need to realize that customers come in all different shapes and sizes. And a subscription license (yearly fee, free upgrades) takes away a lot of your potential customer service problems.

Because it is always a small percentage of your customers (the problems) that take up the greatest amount of your time. I think the rule of thumb always ends up "10% of your customers will take up 90% of your time." So if you can somehow get those people off your back, you just saved a lot of problems...

And telling them, "It will be in the next release, and you'll get that for FREE. (as part of your yearly subscription...)" Would solve a lot of your problems. But if they had to pay for the next release...they'd have a fit.

Bull

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the fundamental issue I have with the F/OSS mindeset--you have the source, so you can fix things yourself, and to hell with everyone else.

First of all, let me be the 5 millionth person to point out that not every user has the skills, tools, time, and inclination needed to fix things. (Yes, you were responding to a person who did provide a fix, but I'm talking about the more genral case.)

Second, the inherent selfishness and short sightedness of this F/OSS mindset is very damaging to the whole community's image, and ultimately, to the success of projects. What the hell ever happened to putting the user first, to valuing and maximizing the benefit the project provides to non-developers? Until the F/OSS community stops acting like a bunch of petulant kids and starts behaving like responsible adults, this will be a very serious problem, one that many people within the community don't even see.

Re:Bull

[bunratty]

This is the fundamental issue I have with the F/OSS mindeset--you have the source, so you can fix things yourself, and to hell with everyone else.

No, that's not the F/OSS mindset, just your misunderstanding of it.

Do car manufacturers expect drivers to fix their own cars? In some cases they do, but most people just take their cars into a shop for even the most minor maintenance.

The F/OSS mindset compares open software to normal cars as we have them today, and closed software to a car with its hood locked shut. If you have a problem with closed source software, you're a the mercy of whoever has the key to get into the engine. If they don't want to fix the problem, you have no choice but to live with it.

The F/OSS community certainly does not expect normal users to patch their code. The idea is that you can hire someone to fix the software if necessary. Normally, individual users would not do this, but it would make sense for medium- to large-size companies to do this.

no reason?

[Jacek Poplawski]

Anyone who was on the verge of switching before now have virtually no reason not to.

I disagree, Opera is not Free Software - its source is closed. Why should I use closed source browser when I can use FireFox??!

Re:no reason?

[Anonymous Coward]

If religion is your thing(open source vs. closed) then I suppose you're right. But for people who just like to get work done, Firefox isn't even an option. Unless of course you like a slow, bloated memory hog of a program that is only stable half the time.

So in light of your question, I must ask. Why would I use a browser that requires that I hunt down 30+ plugins just to get the functionality that comes standard in Opera?

Re:no reason?

[Karhgath]

Unless you are taking an ideological stance in which you do not use any closed/proprietary software(including windows, office, etc.), in which case it's justified, or if you are a Firefox developper and need the source, I don't see that as a strong argument. The fact that it's open source doesn't mean much beside for development and ideological reasons. In the end it's a product.

Now, you may not like Opera for other reasons, or you are happy with firefox and don't see why you'd switch, that's fine. But not trying it because it's not open source is pretty stupid IMHO.

Now, since they are mostly similar, I don't see a lot of people switching from one to another, but that's something else and has nothing to do in the fact that it's open source or not. Those using FF don't see why they should switch, and Oepra users don't see why they should switch. Some will switch because of a couple of features or other reasons, but they both do a pretty good job.

Maybe I'm an open source traitor, but I do like open source and see the advantage of it, but if a closed source software does a better job, or is really cool and innovate, and the price is right, I'll gladly pay to encourage the company. 20-40 bucks for a software I use everyday? That's fair. Now it's free, which is even better. I use tons of open source software whenever I can, but I still use some closed software too. I donate or contribute to open source projects whenever I can, just as I pay for a closed software if I like it.

Re:no reason?

[andrew71]

The fact that you don't value your freedom, or find yourself in such a position that you don't need to, doesn't mean others shouldn't.

Re:No free Opera Mini. Too bad.

[Anonymous Coward]

If Opera made all of their products free, how would they be able to pay the salaries of their employees?

I can see operating systems like Linux getting support contracts even if the code was free, but I think that it won't be as easy to do this with browsers.

Your right and wrong

[SmallFurryCreature]

You see being easy to use is NOT what opensource is all about. It is the fact that YOU can modify YOUR copy of the sourcecode so that YOUR binary will do what YOU want it to do.

It does not mean YOU can alter MY copy of MY sourcecode. Or even to force me to distribute YOUR alteration.

Sure in the case were you are unable to distribute your alteration to those who need it it sucks donkey balls. Just as IE's total domination of the browser market sucks donkey balls because it still means I can't use many many many features that work beautifull in every real browser out there.

So firefox in this case showed both how opensource works, namely that he was able to modify his own copy of it to do what he wanted AND showed why doing doing web development is such a pain in the ass. Because ultimately you can't develop for the browser on your machine, you have to write for the browser installed on your clients machine. Even if that is netscape 4.

Next time I get a snide remark about a C programmer building 100% clientside software for Windows 2000 only I am gonna go postal. PHP/ASP/Perl may be joke languages but crosscoding between browsers is the ultimate challenge. Doom3 engine, PAH! Try just getting a bunch of left floated images to center. Now that takes brains.

What do you mean I sound bitter?

Switched from Firefox to Opera recently

[Deviant]

I have been a loyal user of the Mozilla Foundations efforts since early versions of the Mozilla client and straight through to the most recent version of Firefox. I have used their browser because I felt it was faster/safer/cleaner than IE and it has served me well in keeping spyware and adware free.

I had tried Opera years ago and it just didn't click with me. The ads were intrusive in some of the earlier versions and I ended up going right back to Mozilla. However, when Opera was doing their birthday bash code giveaway thing recently I tried it again. I have been impressed enough where I have switched to it as my primary browser. It is everything I want in a browser - small, fast, feature-filled and slick out of the box. This is particularly obvious on an older P3M laptop that I use where Opera is much faster than Firefox. I think that the feature that really drove me over the edge though is the password saving/form filling wand. It saves passwords that Firefox won't and it makes it one click to log into any web page or online banking site I use. I have yet to find a site it won't remember/prefill.

All in all I would suggest that anyone who doesn't understand what people see in Opera give it a try for a day or so and make an informed choice. What do you have to loose?

If there is anyone from Opera reading this I want to thank you for your wonderful browser. The newly free version is a great gift to the world and I, for one, am appreciative.

Re:Switched from Firefox to Opera recently

[Anonymous Coward]

I am sure not even with the fanboys like you Opera will go anywhere. The truth is that Firefox is here to rule them all.

Right... but wrong

[poptones]

The incentive to put users first comes when I have to earn a buck. If I can't present *my* client with a better solution than the other guy then I lose the sale.

THAT is where the user enters the picture. Open source software gives developers a box of quality tools that developers can then offer to their customers.

If you are using redhat and redhat's support team then you are using redhat's version of firefox - NOT the version of firefox you download from firefox.com. if you are using ubuntu and ubuntu's updates, then you are using ubuntu's version of firefox - NOT the version of firefox you download from firefox.com.

And if you are writing a website that requires special features unique to any specific browser then you should count your lucky stars to have found a boss stupid enough to give you work.