If they are connected to the network, there is probably a very good reason for it...
Lazyness? Insanely stupid cost cutting?
Yes, the components of the system need to get data back to the dispatcher, and receive instructions in return. No, that doesn't require the internet. You can use a modem on a leased line. Yes, it really is possible to send and receive data without the intarweb.
The internet is a cheap, insecure way to accomplish what should be done on an expensive, secure, private network.
The program I graduated from definitely aimed to put out thinkers. They told us that technology would change many times during our careers, and we could only remain valuable if we understood underlying principles, and could apply them in novel ways. That was 25 years ago, but it sounds a lot like the contents of the TFA.
So, we were doing it 25 years ago, we still need to do it today, what have the schools been doing in the time in between?
You can be convicted only if you were not paid. Are you ready to prove you weren't paid?
You can be harassed anytime someone in power wants to claim you were paid. A politicized Justice Department or Federal Elections Commission could harass any blogger simply by alleging that he was paid. By the time he clears his name and pays his legal bills, he'll be a suitably bankrupt object lesson. Of course, our government bureaus will never be politicised, right? Right?
I was surprised when I read that Apple was having discussions with Cisco on the name.
Why would that surprise you? However silly we might think trademark law, Cisco owns that trademark under the current law. If Apple wants to use it, they'll have to make a deal with Cisco. Or did you mean that you were surprised that they were still talking so late in the game?
Trusting Cisco over something like this and they screw Apple over?
I don't see that they trusted Cisco. It looks to me as if Apple very cynically decided that rather than come to an agreement, they'd try to screw Cisco in court. Apple has been nasty before, but this is worse behavior than I expected.
It's not like they had no other choices for the name. Trademark law still allows companies to name products without affixing an ``i'', though few companies are taking advantage of that legal lattitude. Even really stupid names like `Zune'' and ``Wee-wee'' don't seem to hinder sales, so I really don't see any reason for Apple to try to cheat Cisco on this silly name.
All of this is from memory, and some of it may be wrong. I'm sure that folks who know a lot more, but were much too busy to answer your questions, will have loads of time to correct my mistakes, so here goes:
What are SCOSource license fees?
SCOSource license fees are the fees SCO charges to folks for [unix|linux] licenses. It seems very unlikely that they have the right to sell licenses for Linux (that is sort of what the lawsuits are about). They do have teh right to sell licenses for unix, which brings us to your next question:
And why would SCO owe Novell money?
Novel owns Unix. I don't remember the convoluted trail that ATT's rights in the name and source code followed to come to Novell, but it is theirs. SCO has the right to sell licenses to Unix source, acting as Novell's agent. That last bit is important, because Novell has the right to tell their agent what to do, and has the right to get some portion of the price of those licenses.
What does this have to do with Microsoft and Sun license fees?
MS and Sun paid SCO big bucks to either to get peace of mind (short-sighted selfishness), or to keep the suit against IBM/linux alive (far-sighted selfishness). Which you believe about each of them depends on which conspiracy theory you like today. As mentioned above, Novell has a cut coming. If they didn't get it from SCO, then SCO has yet more troubles. Like imminent bankruptcy. And, maybe like loss of their right to sell licenses. If I found that my agent was holding out on me, he wouldn't be my agent any more! No telling whether Novell will see this a a chance to terminate their agreement with SCO, though
. While Apple has said CEO Steve Jobs did not profit from the stock-option backdating, Jobs has reportedly hired his own attorney to deal with the SEC and Justice Department."
This is probably a great time to remind everyone that unless you, personally, have paid your attorney's retainer, he is not your attorney. If the lawyers paid by Apple could save Apple a nickle by hanging an innocent Steve Jobs out to dry, they would be obligated to point out that fact to their client, who is not Steve Jobs.
The moral of this is that even if your employer has paid for a lawyer, you still need your own lawyer, even if you really are as important as Steve Jobs thinks he is. Don't depend on your employer's lawyer to defend you. He'll sell you out as soon as it helps his client.
Do you remember the goatse links that trolls and pranksters used to put in their posts? We learned to check links before we clicked, and then the slashcode was altered to show the url; all this, to reduce the chance of accidentally seeing the goatse guy, just to protect our sensibilities.
As the summary says, the blocking will be trivial to circumvent. So, why not make the blocking available? It sounds like a value-added feature that will be great marketing fodder. You can either advertise ``safer surfing'' or ``no blocking,'' depending on whether you implement it. As long as it's a free market decision and not a government mandate, I think it's all good.
I hope that the new Congress will put its foot down on yet another intrusion into American personal liberty. The old one -- even the Democratic members -- did not.
Meet the new congress... same as the old congress.
The last part of your complaint really puts things in perspective, doesn't it? I could have voted for a republican candidate if he had been willing to shrink the powers of our government. I could have voted for a democrat who was willing to do that. Sadly, I've never seen a serious candidate for national office (except Ron Paul) who could plausibly claim that he was willing to reduce federal power in any practical way.
I hope that over the next two years, we will all learn that, just as voting republican in 2000 didn't solve our problems with government, voting democrat in 2006 and 2008 won't either. I wish that we had a viable alternative, but I'm afraid that we won't see one until after we all see that we need one.
Here are two easy, sure-fire ways to get some medical coverage.
1) You and your wife each sign up for a 1 credit flower-arranging class at your local community college. Pay for the student insurance for each of you and for any children. This will cost you something like $1,000 per person per year, and provides moderate coverage with a rather low cap (often $100,000). You also get access to the student health center, which takes care of the checkups and the well-baby vists and such at a very reasonable cost. Plus, you get to learn flower arranging or auto repair! This is a good option for the young and healthy. Be really compulsive about brushing your kid's teeth, since these policies don't cover dentistry.
2) If you are a born-again Christian, look into Medi-Share. It's not insurance, and there are no guarentees of anything, but it might be just what you need. If you aren't a Christian, look elsewhere.
I haven't yet read the fine article. I do know just a bit about naval architecture. This should help with skin friction, which is the big deal at low speeds. For higher speeds, the resistance which comes from making the wake is the big deal, since the wave-making resistance increases roughly as the square of the speed.
So, what's ``low speed?'' That's probably going to be any speed much below sqrt(waterline length in feet), with units of knots. So, for a 400-foot long ship, anything less than 20 knots is in the speed range where this is likely to matter. For a 900 footer, anything less than 30 knots. Most ships travel in that low speed range, so this could be practical.
From the summary:... compared bugs in Oracle and SQL Server that were reported and fixed between December 2000 and November 2006.
Reported and fixed means that the company which doesn't fix bugs looks more secure. Not that I'm implying that MS is worse than Oracle on this, mind you. I just wanted to point out that this metric has loads of potential flaws.
Even Americans can't stick to a single mile (they have like 3 or 4)...
I'm an American, and I'm quite sure that we have exactly one mile, of 5,280 feet, called the statute mile.
Mariners use for navigation a nautical mile, which is roughly 6076.115 feet. Its length is set by the diameter of the earth. One nautical mile along the equator equals one minute East or West of Greenwich. The nautical mile was dreamed up by the British. Unless you are navigating a boat, you don't need to know any of this.
You can say that last bit about most of the tangle of traditional weights and measures: if you need them, you'll use them often enough to remember them, and there's no confusion or mystery. If you don't need them, they're quaint curiosities that you needn't know about. The traditional units evolved because they served a definite purpose, and they are the handiest thing for the specific job for which they were intended. A ``one size fits all'' unit doesn't fit most things very well.
You are correct when you say that they did have valid documents on them, but the majority of these documents were indeed obtained fraudulently...
I can easily believe that their passports were fraudulent. That doesn't mean that they weren't valid. Whether the issuing country was in on it or not is really immaterial to the current issue. Note that the grandparent post (GPP) said that ``These IDs were all in their own names (though perhaps not in the name under which they were wanted). '' It's my understanding that their U.S. IDs were all legitimate, though the indentity on them may not have been the one they were born with.
Even if we grant that those drivers licenses in the false names on the valid passports were fraudulent, the GPP's argument was that biometric IDs wouldn't have changed a thing: the hijackers could all have gotten them.
... many of the hijackers had had their passports fraudulently manipulated to conceal travel in and through Iran and Afghanistan, knowing full well that such travel histories would likely incur further scrutiny upon entry to the US...
As for not recording travel to countries like Afganistan, et cetera, that's common practice. I've been told that people who are traveling in the Middle East get their passports stamped on a removeable page when they go to Israel, so they can go on to the muslim countries without hassle. The Israelis do this, I'm told, to encourage tourism.
And yet, they [computers, that is] still need to be manufactured and supported like any other product. They aren't put together on the fly. Changing the way the process works costs money.
True. How about MS getting that silly refund clause out of the EULA? Until that clause is gone, I'd say that anyone who wants a refund for Windows has it coming, regardless of what's convenient for the bundler. Maybe the bundlers should have a talk with MS about it. Since that clause is probably there because the EULA would be invalid without it, I don't think the situation will change soon.
Well, imagine that Ford, Chevy, Toyota, et cetera, were all selling cars, but the only engine they would put in them was an engine from MassiveSucks (the convicted monopolist manufacturer of automotive engines).
Furthermore, imagine that the mandatory MS engine was high-priced, and unsatisfactory to you, while another engine, available separately, at a lower cost, was better for your purpose. Imagine, too, that the MS engine came with a license which said, in part: ``If you don't agree to use this engine only on MS-approved trips, you MUST return the engine to the dealer who sold you the car, for a refund.''
That would be a pretty solid analogy to the actual situation. I don't think that the current car industry is quite in that state. Especially, the EULA just doesn't exist on car parts which are sold as part of a new car.
There's no one as short sighted as a bureaucrat. I should know: I am one, and I work with them every day. We regularly do foolish things, to achieve short term, counter-productive goals.
Some glaciers are receding, some aren't. Which ones are doing which varies from year to year.
Antarctica seems to be cooling, and its coastal ice pack is thicker than ever.
I do hope you're right about global warming, because global cooling looks at least as probable, given the few hard facts we actually know. Global warming would clearly leave the world a better place for all of us (especially the world's poor and hungry!), with more rainfall, warmer winters, more food, and so on. Global cooling, on the other hand, would probably kill more of the poor folks in Africa than the muslims' genocide and AIDS and Kyoto all put together.
In January, residents of the far north have no choice but to stay out of the sun.
Above the arctic circle, the sun stays down for months; coincidently, it's down for exactly those months that this sort of problem can arise.
Below the arctic circle, you get a few hours of twilight around noon. The sun never gets more than a few degrees above the southern horizon, and so the sunlight is being filtered through many miles of southern atmosphere, probably including quite a bit of ozone.
No wonder no one took him seriously.
Indeed. There won't be any potential for overexposure until April or May... long after the ozone problem has worked itself out. I see no reason to doubt that this sort of pattern was present long before we learned to measure it. No wonder we don't take the chicken littles seriously.
... either you will no longer be able submit digital pictures and financial records as evidence of XYZ Corp.'s illegal... dealings or it can make it impossible for the RIAA/MPAA/DMCARCALSVPT to subpoena you...
And as for software being a public or private good,...
Hate to screw up a good rant, but software is, by definition, a public good.
A public good is non-excludable, and non-rivalrous in consumption. That is, like a streetlight, you can't keep people from benefitting by it (non-excludable), and you don't lose any of your benefits when others benefit by it (non-rivalrous). Schooling is not a public good, since it is easily excludable: just close the door of the school room.
... that's why we have licenses.
No.
Some public goods can be made artificially excludable by law. Lighthouses are a good example of this (lighthouses in England were once private, for-profit, very lucrative businesses). Software is another example of a public good which can easily be made artificially excludable. That's ``...why we have licenses'': to artificially turn a public good (information) into a private good.
We originally began doing that because our constitution allows (but doesn't require) our congress to grant these monopolies:
``To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;'' (article 1, section 8, discussed
here.)
Whether it is still a good idea for Congress to grant those monopolies to all software creators is an empirical question, and the answer may be no. If we can identify any cases in which patents or copyrights are hindering progress in the sciences and useful arts, Congress would have no authority to grant those exclusive rights in those cases.
The model involved in this research was tweaked to reproduce the climate data for the last 50 years. I do make the presumption that if the model can do so with reasonable accuracy that it can predict the future with reasonable accuracy.
Bad presumption, I'm afraid. I've explained that a bit in an earlier reply, see here.
What it boils down to is the model is only assured to be good for the range of data that you fitted it to. Plug in data that is outside that range (which you must do, if you believe that the future will be significantly different than the present!) and the model is suddenly unreliable.
Of course, I've assumed that the model isn't suffering from spurious correlation or over-fitting. In those cases, it could be wrong for the range of data you fitted it to!
Put in the conditions for 50 years ago. Run the model forward 50 years. If the model correctly predicts the conditions today, report that. Then tell us what it predicts about the future.
Sorry, that won't help.
The conditions for 50 years ago are nothing like the conditions that the Chicken Littles are claiming we'll see in another 50 years. A model which accurately predicts 2005 from 1955 could fail utterly to predict 2055 from 2005.
The problem is called ``out of sample prediction''. The model can be expected to be accurate for the range of data used to calibrate it. When you try to predict the future by plugging in data which is outside the range of the data you used to calibrate your model, there is no reason to think that the model will still work.
I'd say that out-of-sample prediction is right up there with ``consensus'' as a sign of bad science.
It had a clear lead on Mozilla and IE for a while but it just goes to show that most people won't pay money for "great" when "good" is free.
Better late than never, better free than expensive, I suppose.
I think you're right, Opera blew an opportunity for market share by not doing this, and more, much earlier. Is market share a big deal to them, though?
Opera has set their sights on making money by selling software or ad-ware. Libre software doesn't make much sense with that business model. I suppose they could have gone the route Ghostscript did, with a current for-pay version,and an older libre version.
As long as they've making the payroll, though, what reason do they have to throw that away chasing market share?
It's unfortunate, really, because this probably means that Opera is going to fade away, like so many other proprietary projects have over the years. If they had made it libre, the world would be left with a nice browser at the end of it. It's their decision.
Slashdot Mirror
Lazyness? Insanely stupid cost cutting?
Yes, the components of the system need to get data back to the dispatcher, and receive instructions in return. No, that doesn't require the internet. You can use a modem on a leased line. Yes, it really is possible to send and receive data without the intarweb.
The internet is a cheap, insecure way to accomplish what should be done on an expensive, secure, private network.
So, we were doing it 25 years ago, we still need to do it today, what have the schools been doing in the time in between?
You can be convicted only if you were not paid. Are you ready to prove you weren't paid?
You can be harassed anytime someone in power wants to claim you were paid. A politicized Justice Department or Federal Elections Commission could harass any blogger simply by alleging that he was paid. By the time he clears his name and pays his legal bills, he'll be a suitably bankrupt object lesson. Of course, our government bureaus will never be politicised, right? Right?
Why would that surprise you? However silly we might think trademark law, Cisco owns that trademark under the current law. If Apple wants to use it, they'll have to make a deal with Cisco. Or did you mean that you were surprised that they were still talking so late in the game?
Trusting Cisco over something like this and they screw Apple over?
I don't see that they trusted Cisco. It looks to me as if Apple very cynically decided that rather than come to an agreement, they'd try to screw Cisco in court. Apple has been nasty before, but this is worse behavior than I expected.
It's not like they had no other choices for the name. Trademark law still allows companies to name products without affixing an ``i'', though few companies are taking advantage of that legal lattitude. Even really stupid names like `Zune'' and ``Wee-wee'' don't seem to hinder sales, so I really don't see any reason for Apple to try to cheat Cisco on this silly name.
What are SCOSource license fees?
SCOSource license fees are the fees SCO charges to folks for [unix|linux] licenses. It seems very unlikely that they have the right to sell licenses for Linux (that is sort of what the lawsuits are about). They do have teh right to sell licenses for unix, which brings us to your next question:
And why would SCO owe Novell money?
Novel owns Unix. I don't remember the convoluted trail that ATT's rights in the name and source code followed to come to Novell, but it is theirs. SCO has the right to sell licenses to Unix source, acting as Novell's agent. That last bit is important, because Novell has the right to tell their agent what to do, and has the right to get some portion of the price of those licenses.
What does this have to do with Microsoft and Sun license fees?
MS and Sun paid SCO big bucks to either to get peace of mind (short-sighted selfishness), or to keep the suit against IBM/linux alive (far-sighted selfishness). Which you believe about each of them depends on which conspiracy theory you like today. As mentioned above, Novell has a cut coming. If they didn't get it from SCO, then SCO has yet more troubles. Like imminent bankruptcy. And, maybe like loss of their right to sell licenses. If I found that my agent was holding out on me, he wouldn't be my agent any more! No telling whether Novell will see this a a chance to terminate their agreement with SCO, though
This is probably a great time to remind everyone that unless you, personally, have paid your attorney's retainer, he is not your attorney. If the lawyers paid by Apple could save Apple a nickle by hanging an innocent Steve Jobs out to dry, they would be obligated to point out that fact to their client, who is not Steve Jobs.
The moral of this is that even if your employer has paid for a lawyer, you still need your own lawyer, even if you really are as important as Steve Jobs thinks he is. Don't depend on your employer's lawyer to defend you. He'll sell you out as soon as it helps his client.
As the summary says, the blocking will be trivial to circumvent. So, why not make the blocking available? It sounds like a value-added feature that will be great marketing fodder. You can either advertise ``safer surfing'' or ``no blocking,'' depending on whether you implement it. As long as it's a free market decision and not a government mandate, I think it's all good.
Meet the new congress ... same as the old congress.
The last part of your complaint really puts things in perspective, doesn't it? I could have voted for a republican candidate if he had been willing to shrink the powers of our government. I could have voted for a democrat who was willing to do that. Sadly, I've never seen a serious candidate for national office (except Ron Paul) who could plausibly claim that he was willing to reduce federal power in any practical way.
I hope that over the next two years, we will all learn that, just as voting republican in 2000 didn't solve our problems with government, voting democrat in 2006 and 2008 won't either. I wish that we had a viable alternative, but I'm afraid that we won't see one until after we all see that we need one.
The linked site seems to be down (gee, you think it might be slashdotted?), but this paper seems to be covering the same topic.
1) You and your wife each sign up for a 1 credit flower-arranging class at your local community college. Pay for the student insurance for each of you and for any children. This will cost you something like $1,000 per person per year, and provides moderate coverage with a rather low cap (often $100,000). You also get access to the student health center, which takes care of the checkups and the well-baby vists and such at a very reasonable cost. Plus, you get to learn flower arranging or auto repair! This is a good option for the young and healthy. Be really compulsive about brushing your kid's teeth, since these policies don't cover dentistry.
2) If you are a born-again Christian, look into Medi-Share. It's not insurance, and there are no guarentees of anything, but it might be just what you need. If you aren't a Christian, look elsewhere.
So, what's ``low speed?'' That's probably going to be any speed much below sqrt(waterline length in feet), with units of knots. So, for a 400-foot long ship, anything less than 20 knots is in the speed range where this is likely to matter. For a 900 footer, anything less than 30 knots. Most ships travel in that low speed range, so this could be practical.
Reported and fixed means that the company which doesn't fix bugs looks more secure. Not that I'm implying that MS is worse than Oracle on this, mind you. I just wanted to point out that this metric has loads of potential flaws.
I'm an American, and I'm quite sure that we have exactly one mile, of 5,280 feet, called the statute mile.
Mariners use for navigation a nautical mile, which is roughly 6076.115 feet. Its length is set by the diameter of the earth. One nautical mile along the equator equals one minute East or West of Greenwich. The nautical mile was dreamed up by the British. Unless you are navigating a boat, you don't need to know any of this.
You can say that last bit about most of the tangle of traditional weights and measures: if you need them, you'll use them often enough to remember them, and there's no confusion or mystery. If you don't need them, they're quaint curiosities that you needn't know about. The traditional units evolved because they served a definite purpose, and they are the handiest thing for the specific job for which they were intended. A ``one size fits all'' unit doesn't fit most things very well.
Take a look at my bookmarks on metrification for some interesting articles on this.
I think it's your imagination that's making things repulsive.
I can easily believe that their passports were fraudulent. That doesn't mean that they weren't valid. Whether the issuing country was in on it or not is really immaterial to the current issue. Note that the grandparent post (GPP) said that ``These IDs were all in their own names (though perhaps not in the name under which they were wanted). '' It's my understanding that their U.S. IDs were all legitimate, though the indentity on them may not have been the one they were born with.
Even if we grant that those drivers licenses in the false names on the valid passports were fraudulent, the GPP's argument was that biometric IDs wouldn't have changed a thing: the hijackers could all have gotten them.
As for not recording travel to countries like Afganistan, et cetera, that's common practice. I've been told that people who are traveling in the Middle East get their passports stamped on a removeable page when they go to Israel, so they can go on to the muslim countries without hassle. The Israelis do this, I'm told, to encourage tourism.
True. How about MS getting that silly refund clause out of the EULA? Until that clause is gone, I'd say that anyone who wants a refund for Windows has it coming, regardless of what's convenient for the bundler. Maybe the bundlers should have a talk with MS about it. Since that clause is probably there because the EULA would be invalid without it, I don't think the situation will change soon.
Furthermore, imagine that the mandatory MS engine was high-priced, and unsatisfactory to you, while another engine, available separately, at a lower cost, was better for your purpose. Imagine, too, that the MS engine came with a license which said, in part: ``If you don't agree to use this engine only on MS-approved trips, you MUST return the engine to the dealer who sold you the car, for a refund.''
That would be a pretty solid analogy to the actual situation. I don't think that the current car industry is quite in that state. Especially, the EULA just doesn't exist on car parts which are sold as part of a new car.
There's no one as short sighted as a bureaucrat. I should know: I am one, and I work with them every day. We regularly do foolish things, to achieve short term, counter-productive goals.
Antarctica seems to be cooling, and its coastal ice pack is thicker than ever.
I do hope you're right about global warming, because global cooling looks at least as probable, given the few hard facts we actually know. Global warming would clearly leave the world a better place for all of us (especially the world's poor and hungry!), with more rainfall, warmer winters, more food, and so on. Global cooling, on the other hand, would probably kill more of the poor folks in Africa than the muslims' genocide and AIDS and Kyoto all put together.
I've got some links to facts and discussion of glaciers, ice packs, temperature series and so on at http://geocities.com/nelstomlinson/globalwarming.h tml
Above the arctic circle, the sun stays down for months; coincidently, it's down for exactly those months that this sort of problem can arise.
Below the arctic circle, you get a few hours of twilight around noon. The sun never gets more than a few degrees above the southern horizon, and so the sunlight is being filtered through many miles of southern atmosphere, probably including quite a bit of ozone.
No wonder no one took him seriously.
Indeed. There won't be any potential for overexposure until April or May ... long after the ozone problem has worked itself out. I see no reason to doubt that this sort of pattern was present long before we learned to measure it. No wonder we don't take the chicken littles seriously.
Yes, either one.
Which do you think the lobbyists are pushing for?
Hate to screw up a good rant, but software is, by definition, a public good.
A public good is non-excludable, and non-rivalrous in consumption. That is, like a streetlight, you can't keep people from benefitting by it (non-excludable), and you don't lose any of your benefits when others benefit by it (non-rivalrous). Schooling is not a public good, since it is easily excludable: just close the door of the school room.
No.
Some public goods can be made artificially excludable by law. Lighthouses are a good example of this (lighthouses in England were once private, for-profit, very lucrative businesses). Software is another example of a public good which can easily be made artificially excludable. That's ``...why we have licenses'': to artificially turn a public good (information) into a private good.
We originally began doing that because our constitution allows (but doesn't require) our congress to grant these monopolies:
Whether it is still a good idea for Congress to grant those monopolies to all software creators is an empirical question, and the answer may be no. If we can identify any cases in which patents or copyrights are hindering progress in the sciences and useful arts, Congress would have no authority to grant those exclusive rights in those cases.
Bad presumption, I'm afraid. I've explained that a bit in an earlier reply, see here.
What it boils down to is the model is only assured to be good for the range of data that you fitted it to. Plug in data that is outside that range (which you must do, if you believe that the future will be significantly different than the present!) and the model is suddenly unreliable.
Of course, I've assumed that the model isn't suffering from spurious correlation or over-fitting. In those cases, it could be wrong for the range of data you fitted it to!
Sorry, that won't help.
The conditions for 50 years ago are nothing like the conditions that the Chicken Littles are claiming we'll see in another 50 years. A model which accurately predicts 2005 from 1955 could fail utterly to predict 2055 from 2005.
The problem is called ``out of sample prediction''. The model can be expected to be accurate for the range of data used to calibrate it. When you try to predict the future by plugging in data which is outside the range of the data you used to calibrate your model, there is no reason to think that the model will still work.
I'd say that out-of-sample prediction is right up there with ``consensus'' as a sign of bad science.
He'd never lie to us, would he?
Better late than never, better free than expensive, I suppose.
I think you're right, Opera blew an opportunity for market share by not doing this, and more, much earlier. Is market share a big deal to them, though?
Opera has set their sights on making money by selling software or ad-ware. Libre software doesn't make much sense with that business model. I suppose they could have gone the route Ghostscript did, with a current for-pay version,and an older libre version.
As long as they've making the payroll, though, what reason do they have to throw that away chasing market share?
It's unfortunate, really, because this probably means that Opera is going to fade away, like so many other proprietary projects have over the years. If they had made it libre, the world would be left with a nice browser at the end of it. It's their decision.