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Opera Founder Jon S. von Tetzchner Resigns
fysdt writes with this excerpt from TechCrunch:
"Opera founder Jon S. von Tetzchner has resigned from the company. In an email to Opera employees, von Tetzchner said that 'It has become clear that The Board, Management and I do not share the same values and we do not have the same opinions on how to keep evolving Opera. As a result I have come to an agreement with the Board to end my time at Opera. I feel the Board and Management is more quarterly focused than me.'"
Sorry it just slipped.
If not, that'll cut their usage share by half.
Opera has been a damn good browser, and the focus of the company Opera has always been producing a damn good browser. If the focus becomes quarterly profit, I don't see much of a future for the Opera browser.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
After the remaining board members "monetize" it, (my guess as to their intentions), I think your estimate will be quite accurate.
Okay, I actually read the article and the press release, and I'm still at a loss as to what he means by "quarterly focused". Is he complaining about a lack of big picture focus, or is he just hoping that throwing enough buzz-words will confuse people into leaving him alone?
Business guys want short-term profit at all costs. Technical guys want long-term technical excellence which is better in the long run but not as profitable in the short run. Because the business guys have the dough, they win in a for-profit business.
That (in a nutshell) is why for-profit business cannot be the driver of excellence in software.
I am officially gone from
Always a scrappy underdog. Provides a lot of out of the box capabilities in a small install. Sorry homeboy decided to quit. Looks like he's srs bsns.
I think the board will find that monetizing a great product in an environment of free mediocre and/or good equivalent products is still a failing business model.
I don't use the Opera browser but I do have an account at Fastmail (an Opera company). I wonder if they'll be affected by this dustup.
I've been using Opera since before it was free, since I feel it provides the most in terms of features and performance. Every update seems to get better and faster while maintaining a low footprint. I don't know how they keep adding features without it becoming a bloated mess, but they manage to. It's sad they don't have more market share.
Why doesn't von Tetzchner just fork the source and create a new project? Oh right, Opera is closed source. Pity.
Basically you are correct. However, you're overlooking that companies have to rely on funding from outside sources in order to manage their cash flow. This means creditors, and creditors are all intensely fixated on quarterly financial targets due to the covenants they have in place with their lendees. They don't care about competition leap-frogging, they care about whether or not the company can hit their EBITDA targets, as well as payments on capital, senior, and other kinds of debt. A company has to take this into account, especially if they want to manage their cashflow and be able to pay their employees plus their rent and everything else. It's a lofty goal to focus on strategic long-term objectives, but that has to be balanced by quarterly financial obligations, or else something important is going to be shafted.
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
I met Jon years ago, and found him to be a great guy. The company at the time was focused on making a good browser for power users, and they did that really well. It also helped that back then they were focused on performance and working on older systems.
At some point I noticed things changing years later. Opera got bigger, and slower. UI stuff that worked forever was broken in favor of a less flexible Firefox clone model. Attention was diverted to writing an email client. Then a BitTorrent client. Then a web server built into the browser. I only wish I was making that last one up.
The company lost focus on what made Opera good in the first place as they went from trying to be a good, fast browser to trying to do everything for everybody. Finally I stopped using it when the drift got so bad that it wasn't really better then Firefox at anything.
This drift coincided with the company growing in size and it being less about how it started: Jon and a few other guys trying to make a good browser.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
How so? Businesses need to make money to stay in business. After JvT stepped down as CEO, the profits started accelerating. Even Mozilla needs to make money. Is making money a bad thing?
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There was an article a while back which claimed that Opera can become the new Google if they wish almost overnight. Their secret weapon is Opera Mini and all the traffic and searches that go through their servers.
You are probably trolling but I actually agree with you. I don't understand why everyone is so keen on selling their life story to Google.
They know where you live, what restaurants you go to, where your friends live, where you work (google maps).
They have all your email and instant messages.
They track you around the web with adwords, and have your entire search history regardless, including queries that you decided not to finish typing and every link you've clicked on.
They know what you've posted to usenet.
They have the videos and images you've posted to the internet, so they know what you look like. Maybe someday instead of blurring your face out on street view, they'll just link to your information.
They know what products you shop for online.
Now that they've repurposed Urchin as google stats, they are on even more websites, watching. They also are a popular host for javascript libraries, which are on even more websites.
Some day Google is going to flounder and all that data is going to get sold off at firesale prices to a company without such a colorful logo. Yet for some reason people just keep fighting each other to give them even more personal information.
"the Board and Management is more quarterly focused than me."
That's it. Stick a fork in it. Opera is done.
It will go up for sale within the year, get bought out, and disappear. Because the board needs its golden parachutes.
--
BMO
Did you really just ask a bunch of freetards whether they thought they should pay for anything on a computer? I assume the question was rhetorical?
operatic
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I mean, what could one really expect from Opera if not Drama?
The Humblest Mollusk on the Net
Opera is a free download. They are not making money by charging end users.
Clever signature text goes here.
"more quarterly focused than I"
Like broadcast television in the U.S.?
As I recall, the free downloaded version includes some hooks for Opera to make money from advertisers. IIRC they are discreet and don't get in the way much but I haven't used it for a while. In fact I just started it up and looked around, and can't find any advertising-type things, so it must be very discreet. If you pay for it, those advertising things disappear.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
It is when you're more interested in short term profits than long term costumer satisfaction.
Dilbert RSS feed
WTF are you talking about? There are no advertising "hooks" in Opera. Do people even think about the shit they're saying? Do you have even a single source for that claim.
Since we're pulling stupid comments out of our asses, I think there are advertising hooks in Firefox. Why do you think Google gave so much money to Mozilla?
Yea, FYI from http://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/862816-opera-ceo-steps-down-immediately-replaced/ :
After delivering strong results over over several quarters, Opera slumped to a surprise loss in the third quarter of 2009.
MS certainly didn't help by making IE free, helped by the Windows monopoly.
Not always.
Not always. FYI:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_(web_browser)#History
In fairness to the parent, Opera used to require payment. Then they gave you the choice to download a free but ad-supported client. There could still be some cruft from that edition hanging around in the current code.
Make cheese not war 8:)
He's talking about the ad-supported version of Opera that existed for years.
No, he's not. If you actually read his post you'd have noticed that it was written in the present tense, indicating that he believes that his statements apply to Opera now.
Sorry, what?
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Too bad, Opera is the last browser where flash gaming still works.
Chrome and Firefox both implemented on top of the new flash local shared objects API wrongly, by putting them in the same category as cookies, making it impossible to manage them differently. Good bye saved games.
So sticking with Opera while it still works.
Sure, but what does that have to do with anything? JvT stepped down as CEO a year and a half ago, and the products keep getting better.
Clever signature text goes here.
Opera just lost a loyal user. I've been an opera user since version 4 (circa 2000). The last few years, Opera has gone to the dogs. It has progressively become buggier and buggier and slower and slower and clunkier and clunkier since version 9xx. And the latest version is just a piece of sh!t. It lost my bookmarks and sessions. I also periodically lose all my speed-dials (no rhyme of reason that I can see). The browser crashes a few times a day.
Such a shame... Sorry Jon has to go but it's just as well. I'm sure there are bigger and better things in store for him. He had a great vision (user-focused) but I guess the board just failed to see it his way. Tsk, tsk, a real shame.
Not always? What are you talking about?
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FYI, I mentioned this source in another comment:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_(web_browser)#History
I still don't understand what you are trying to say.
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