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Linux Software

Linux Opera Public Beta by Christmas 87

Posted by Hemos from the getting-another-browser dept.
bigdan writes "A new interview with the lead programmer of the Linux team porting Opera has him (Darren Starr) stating that they hope to have a public beta by Christmas (of Opera 4.0). The interview also goes on to mention a Sparc version coming soon. "
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Linux Opera Public Beta by Christmas More

Linux Opera Public Beta by Christmas

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    • It's not of course not what you usually call shareware that's what I title this 'Open Source ShareWare' -- which is as obvious as you can be. 'FreeShareWare' does'nt work too well.
    • Also, it's fine and dandy to ask people for money, but if you don't give them a way to do it easily, and if they don't have much incentive ... it's not likely to happen. Or it will happen 10 times less.
    • I wanted to emphasize the fact that people are used to 'own' things, even if it's a postcard size certificate , it's better than an electronic notification, what do you think? Even just a sticker.
    • So let's start a website that would sell just this, stickers saying 'I support GnomeSucker' or 'I 0wN KDEKoffeeMachine'.
    • I know, Copyleft helps support free software, but it's kinda hard to sell k3wl 3733+ T-Shirts to one's PHB ...

    --

  • Well what about the projects putting an icon "SUPPORT ME!" linking to the repository's site with an ID, hop, send you credit card number, or even better, for small amounts, group your billing, etc ... and the org/company takes care of sending you the certificate.

    --

  • Subject says it all. IE and Netscape are free pretty much. If these guys expect to _sell_ this thing, I wish them luck.

  • Opera's failure (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The problem, though, is that Opera only accepts W3C specs. It consistently chokes on even minor errors in HTML, and renders the page in a broken manner. Sometimes this even makes the page unreadable.

    That's not good enough. "Be liberal in what you accept, be conservative in what you produce." Good software must be willing to work around being fed bad data. The Opera approach has instead been "Be conservative in what you accept, and tell your users to whine."

    Yes, standards support is good. Support for the Web as it exists, full of invalid markup that most people don't fix, and don't need to fix because 95% of their readership is using a browser derived from Netscape or IE, is better.

    If Lynx choked the same way Opera does, I'd call it a goddamn failure. I don't know why I don't think the same about Opera. Maybe I just have a generous spirit about Norweigans.

  • i submitted the very same thing about 3-4 days ago but it was rejected, as some other stories were which i submitted only to be rejected and then i see on slashdot a few days later its always the way :)
  • Opera chokes all the time. Of course, I look at upwards of several hundred to over a thousand web pages a day on several dozen to upwards of 100 sites, and it might barf on a dozen pages a day. Under NT, it always can be terminated and restarted gracefully. Always.

    In my experience, Netscape crashes about five times as often and IE is unusable about three times as often.

    Opera renders pages much faster and the multi-page MDL display mechanism that others disdain is more efficient.

    In other words, Opera is by far more stable for general-purpose browsing.

    Mozilla is coming along nicely but if Opera ships for Linux with the browser features it now has under Windows, it will be a huge step forward. I'm quite happy they're not planning to include mail or other stuff in the Linux version; that makes it cleaner and I never never ever use a browser for email for both efficiency and security reasons.

    No offense to others who prefer other browsers. But be sure before you fling your arrows that you've actually used Opera enough to have a valid judgment of your own.

    -------
  • No flames here, just a suggestion that you actually read before commenting. It's not hard to find information about Opera [operasoftware.com] and there are plenty of reviews around the net.

    No, Opera is not a text-only browser. Why would they do that when Lynx has been the category-killer there for years?

    -------

  • I don't think the original poster intended to say open source is the only way. The problem with having a closed-source non-[beer]free browser is, of course, that it's closed-source and non[beer]-free. In other words, it's not coming as an option in [your choice of distribution here].

    A browser is an important part of most any workstation, so it's also important to have an open-source browser at your disposal. There are a few in the works, as we all know, but I believe the poster's comment was intended to say, essentially, this:

    Don't get complacent and give up on mozilla and Konquorer and whatever else is in development because there's a good browser available. We still need a good, stable, free browser for Linux (LYNX is great, but you know what I mean). We need to keep after the free browsers whether there's a good closed alternative or not.

    Man's unique agony as a species consists in his perpetual conflict between the desire to stand out and the need to blend in.

  • Nope (Score:1)

    by Johnboy ( 15518 )

    7 MB in debug mode.

  • Yeah, I know, sorry, should've been more clear - I'm just referring to how non-x86 platform support is a _good_ thing.
    ;-)
  • Cool, so it'll do standard CSS2, DHTML, and things like MathML? Excellent.
  • I am sure this issue has been raised before.

    I submitted this news about 3 weeks ago. Hardly anything that's been on the Internet for three weeks could be qualified as "news".

    Eugene.
  • Everyone knows a real browser should be:
    1. 100+ MB
    2. Part of the OS
    3. Un Removable
  • We don't have mail and news but we should have everything else.

    Good! I don't want my web browser to support mail or news. I wouldn't mind it being able to spawn a pine or trn session inside an xterm when it hits a mailto: or news: URL though.

    Al.
    --
  • The main time that money is greatly needed is before the software is available. You need to build up a development team before there is software available.

    Thus, for people to bounce in $10 here and there after the software is available is effectively the wrong time for this to happen.

    There may be some nice people that will contribute $10 after the fact, but it is more appropriate, to my mind, to use things like CoSource, or the Free Software Bazaar, [csustan.edu] pledging payment before the fact, so that the funds are contributed towards commissioning production of free software works.

    FSB, CoSource, and SourceXchange are all taking somewhat different approaches to this...

  • Someone moderated this AC posting down as "Flamebait". Grrrrr. Just because you don't agree with them, doesn't mean it is flamebait. In fact, this AC makes a good point. So I repost it:

    The problem, though, is that Opera only accepts W3C specs. It consistently chokes on even minor errors in HTML, and renders the page in a broken manner. Sometimes this even makes the page unreadable.

    That's not good enough. "Be liberal in what you accept, be conservative in what you
    produce." Good software must be willing to work around being fed bad data. The Opera
    approach has instead been "Be conservative in what you accept, and tell your users to
    whine."

    Yes, standards support is good. Support for the Web as it exists, full of invalid markup
    that most people don't fix, and don't need to fix because 95% of their readership is using a browser derived from Netscape or IE, is better.

    If Lynx choked the same way Opera does, I'd call it a goddamn failure. I don't know why I don't think the same about Opera. Maybe I just have a generous spirit about Norweigans.

    (The above post is an Anonymous Coward's, not mine.)

  • Nope (Score:1)

    by weston ( 16146 )
    It can't cost a ton, but for the amount of time I spend using a browser, I'd give $30-$50 to anyone who could deliver me a faster, less resource hungry, more stable standards-complete browser. I'm sure there are others who feel this way. In fact, some of them have posted to this discussion. Trading 2-3 hours wages for fewer hours of aggravation is an easy decision.

    Of course, if there's something as good available for free, well, I'd probably take it over the offering I'd have to pay for. But I don't think Netscape or IE meet the requirements above.

    However, perhaps you were refering to the probability that Opera will not likely even match (let alone eclipse) NS or IE in market share. That's probably true, but less because of the $$ issue -- more because Netscape has incredible mindshare, and Microsoft has a can't-lose distribution channel. Even if Opera cost nothing, it would still face those challenges. I think their best chance is to operate on reputation for quality and tell people "you get what you pay for."

  • What I found interesting is how short the interview was, and how little discussion there was about WC3 standards. In order to maintain control ov the client side of the net, it will be very important to be at least minimaly complient with the specs.

    Of course it'll be minimally compliant; it has to interpret pages that were written for MSIE and Navigator and make them look attractive. This isn't particularly relevant to the Linux port of Opera.

  • The group of users who have embraced the GPL and Richard Stallman's agenda contains many people who are inherently hostile to commercial software development projects such as Opera. One can see that hostility in many messages here. While I wish Opera the best of luck on the Linux platform, I fear that it may be frequently pirated and/or shunned by many in that group.

    However, there is a related group which has a lower profile but may actually generate more income -- and comprise a more loyal user base -- for Opera. These are the users of the open source BSD UNIX operating systems: FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD. Unlike the GPL "zealots," the BSD community has almost universal respect for commercial software developers who do good work, and will support them and pay for their software.

    Now that the release of a Linux port is imminent, I hope that the development team will take the time to ensure that the browser runs under the BSDs and that it is available as native binaries for them. (The porting effort should be negligible, since the APIs are so similar and the GUI is identical.) Opera would be most welcome in this space, and I'll gladly volunteer to help and promote efforts to bring it there.

    --Brett Glass

  • I don't want my web browser to support mail or news.

    I happen to agree with you, but there are a great many people who like the unified interface/one program for web, mail, and news.
  • I agree it's important to push webmasters towards better standards compliance, but not at the expense of users, some of whom will get fed up and just use Netscape. I can't really recommend Opera to non-technical friends and family because of its limited support for non-standard sites.

    I maintain that you are attacking the wrong problem. Whenever a document does something strange. the browser tries to compensate - called "error recovery". All the browsers act differently when an error is encountered. For instance, Netscape (keeping Mozilla out of the discussion) treats tags one at a time, and would not understand the concepts of "parse tree" or "element content" if you shouted at it. And the more error recovery you put in, the less room there is for actually useful functionality.

    Writing bad HTML is no excuse with the presence of validators - and there are no features that break valid HTML that cannot be expressed in a conforming way.

  • (I don't know why I'm posting this...every time I point out the GPV's true viral nature, I get moderated down by the usual gang of zealots. The surest way to destroy one's karma on Slashdot is to not toe the GPV party line.)

    I use GPVd software. I try very hard not to keep its source code on my system any longer than I absolutely have to in order to prevent its contaminating the truly free software I try to contribute to.
    --
  • By supporting Opera's port to Linux, you're saying to Mozilla et al that you're currently willing to pay for a browser that's better than they can provide for free. In other words, Opera is raising the bar.

    How's that for a slap on the face! :-)

    Wade.

  • Folks remeber is not free! its shareware... ohh well by know id kill to have anything but Netscape ;) but hey konqueror is also coming there was well, it be cool to see all the options we'll have soon :)
  • I've been waiting for this for a long time.
    But a 2 MB executable, isn't that a bit bigger than anticipated?
    This is how browser developers should think:

    quote
    the first version will be focused on browsing.
    /quote

    Good news, all in all.

    Remi.

  • Giddyup! . .but will it do W3C specs? (Score:3)

    by Money__ ( 87045 ) on Friday November 26, 1999 @04:32AM (#1503461)
    from the interview: How will the Linux version compare to the Windows version when it comes to features?

    DS We don't have mail and news but we should have everything else. In a lot of cases we will have more features to make Linux users happy.

    Like what?

    DS Control from outside programs so that it may be used with other programs such as KDE and Gnome.

    Good news for Gnome users

    What I found interesting is how short the interview was, and how little discussion there was about WC3 standards. In order to maintain control ov the client side of the net, it will be very important to be at least minimaly complient with the specs.

  • NOTE: Before I begin, I am not a KDE zealot, and I don't even use KDE... I use straight enlightenment*.

    (I actually find it to be stable and fast, but then again I was a windows user for the greater portion of my life so pretty much anything is stable and fast.)

    I think that our closed-source friend Opera will be blown out of the water by Konquerer once KDE 2.0 is out, and I even plan to switch to KDE with the 2.0 release. GO KONQUERER!!

    Opera was a great idea, and probably still is... I forget, isn't it text only? Then it won't be competing for the same market as Konq. OK now feel free to flame away for my E usage :-)

  • Opera on beos is undergoing its 6th beta.
    its being beta since 4 month now
    dev is slow ....
    And we are still waiting for the PowerPC version so a linux for other platform, is IMO a Dream.

  • This is definitely a good thing - we like having alternatives to what we already have. (How else would egcs have come about?)
    Mmmm... sparc... reminds me of how much fun non-86 platforms can be... nice SGI... pretty SGI... fast SGI... ;-)
    [Written on orangesquid's SGI Indy ;-)]
  • Opera is being made for X11, but during development they produced a text only version as well, they stated that sometime they plan to release the text only version, but right now they are more interested in getting out the GUI version
  • But a 2 MB executable, isn't that a bit bigger than anticipated?
    It probably is, but I was playing around with wxWindows recently, and even a "Hello, World!" executable for Win32 platforms came in at about 1.5 MB. Granted, it was linked statically and Opera is probably linked against dynamic libraries. But even so, I don't think that 2 MB for a browser executable is going overboard.
  • > Opera was a great idea, and probably still is... I forget, isn't it text only?

    No.

    Regards, Ralph.

  • But a 2 MB executable, isn't that a bit bigger than anticipated?
    Yeah. But let's not worry about bloat until we actually see what they're giving us. I for one will download with a semi-open mind, and if it doesn't live up to expectations, well it's only a beta. They'll make it better.
    Let's face it, though, it'd have to be pretty bad to be worse than netscape. There's nothing worse than proselytising on the uncrashability of Linux if you're talking to someone who mainly uses the computer for surfing. A decent browser is vital to the success of Linux, and I'll happily shell out my credit card number for something good to use until Mozilla is fit for public consumption.
  • Well it may not be open source, or free but atleast its another choice, which is good :)

    i actually submitted this same story about 3 days ago but it was rejected...

  • Any browser competition is good.. (Score:4)

    by xtal ( 49134 ) on Friday November 26, 1999 @04:35AM (#1503471)

    In order to prevent a real mess on the web, lots of browsers using standard specifications are a good thing (tm). If mozilla, opera, etc gain mindshare, then in turn sites will be designed with this in mind.

    A good browser is absolutely essential to the success of linux, be it open or closed source - BillyG isn't dumb, and there's a reason that IE5.0 is one sweet product. Lots of people on /. have pointed out that they boot windows to use it - this isn't a good thing, we want the "list of reasons" for /dev/hda fat32 to go down, not up! :)

    Otoh, it _is_ closed source, although the Opera team did a excellent job on their windows browser, which runs quite nicely on an old 486/75 notebook in the living room displaying my channel listings :).

    Mozilla will stomp them all given time.. open source will always win over time, because companies can't/won't commit to infiniately developing and improving a product line - look at the slowdown with Netscape on Linux.

    Kudos..

  • I'm incredibly pleased to see Sparc Linux support. When closed-source programs do support a non-x86 Linux platform, it's almost invariably Alpha and/or PPC. This is great news for those of us running Linux on a Sparc.
  • My favourite browser will soon work on my favourite OS!!!

    Kudos to all the folks who've been putting in the hours :-)


    ==================================
    neophase

  • This is how browser developers should think

    Nearly, but not quite. IMHO, all versions should be focused on browsing. Oddly enough, my primary requirement for a web browser is that it browse the web. Mail, news, instant messaging etc., are done perfectly well in their own standalone packages. Integrated solutions almost invariably suck (witness Communicator, StarOffice, etc.) I'm not saying it's impossible to do a decent integrated solution, but it should be done with dynamically loadable components, so you don't have bloated executables when you're not using the optional bits. Sadly, all too few apps work this way :-(

  • So If i make errors in my c++ code, should the compiler give me errors/warning or anticipate these errors, corrected by whatever is needed to compile it ? Guess not. It's good to stick to the standards, and not include errors as a part of the standard.
    Ofcourse it's easier for the end user, but it just ain't right.

    'BE the difference that makes a difference' - JEWEL
  • I realize that this has been brought up before, but if linux/fbsd is going to thrive forward we can't support porjects like Opera that cost money [falcon-net.net]

    We would be better of supporting the mozollia project.

    Justen Stepka
    http://www.ruptime.com
  • It works too good to be called a beta, but not good enough to call it final release. Some pages tend too crash Opera beta/6 as does changing the button layout twice in a row. Speed is OK, cache cood be speeded a little bit i guess. Every page visit by me for now looked good.

    Pro: Its speedy, fairly stable and small.
    Pages render very well.
    It exists (or will) for Windows, BeOS, EPOC, Linux (text and X), MAC, OS/2 and others ...
    Its european quality :)

    Contra: It's just fairly stable, not just stable :)
    It's not free (but hey, these guys must make a living too)

    I don't think it makes a lot of sense to compare the BeOS version to the upcoming Linux version as the BeOS version is based on 3.61 source, and the Linux version will be based on the new 4 source.

    Just for the ones interrested: this is posted with Opera 3.61 beta/6 (BeOS)

    Opera, keep up the good work

    'BE the difference that makes a difference' - JEWEL
  • I hate to remind all the people who say the only way to go is OpenSource and the rest is rubbish, that there exists a whole bunch commercial soft for linux (and very expensive). If a company as opera decides to port over their apps to other OSses it can only be for our best. If i see an app that exists in Windows and I look to Linux to see the same app exists then it makes it easier to step over. If you don't like it, don't buy it. But leave us the choice to let us use it.
    Projects like Mozilla & Konq takes time, so be glad that there is an alternative.

    Meesa like Opera

    With one floppy, I take my browser everywhere ... And its a damned good one ...

    Posted with Opera 3.61 beta/6 (BeOS)

    'BE the difference that makes a difference' - Jewel
  • I do appreciate the keyboard shortcuts in Opera.

    For example, I can navigate links in a Webpage without a
    mouse, move forward/back document windows, amble to
    next/previous document in history and so on.

    A list of shortcuts is available here. [operasoftware.com]

  • Hey..not all shareware is evil =) I paid for opera for the win32 platform, and I was quite happy with my purchase. Now, if they'll transfer my license, I'll have a reason to use linux instead of windows. *wonders if a Linux port of EverQuest is forthcoming*
  • The problem, though, is that Opera only accepts W3C specs.

    Plus quite a few Netscapisms.

    It consistently chokes on even minor errors in HTML, and renders the page in a broken manner.

    Not in my experience. This might be because I use it all the time, not every now and then.

    No, Opera 3.6 will not use HTML 4.0 constructs or DHTML. Pages that rely on such features have problems anyway.

    es, standards support is good. Support for the Web as it exists, full of invalid markup that most people don't fix, and don't need to fix because 95% of their readership is using a browser derived from Netscape or IE, is better.

    The operative word being or. The two are sufficiently different - not to speak of version differences in each "family" - to make such goals pure and utter windmill fencing.

    The Big Two are moving towards standards - shouldn't you, too?

  • Opera isn't free as in beer, it isn't free as in speech but what it has always given me is the freedom to browse the way I want and IMHO that is a very important freedom that hasn't been granted to me by any other browser to date.

    If Opera have put as much thought into version 4 as they obviously did for version 3 then I have no doubt that it will be a roaring success.

  • How good is the latest beta? I haven't been over to my BeOS partition in some time, so I haven't downloaded the browser.

    I would imagine that the linux port will look an awful lot like the BeOS one, so we should look closely at that for indications.

  • Nobody seems to do that, though it seems to be a rather straightforward: what about releasing a software under the GPL, for example, and ask the users for money? "If you like this program, please send $10 to xxxx to help advance its development"

    You can then send them a nice certificate, or license or whatever that your PHB can be proud of. Hey, you don't have to tell him you could have had it for free!

    Also, I remember, back when I was using a MAc, there was that thingie called Kagi shareware, where you could really easily pay for the shareware. Why not do the same for open source? I've heard about source-xchange, but that's slightly different in concept, though it MIGHT be a better even more elegant, I believe that selling (bogus) certificates or packages would appeal more to people / phbs used to closed software.

    What d'ya guys think?


    --

  • Re:Software Testing. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Then you've never developed and beta tested something.

    Developers can only coordinate so many testers and so much feedback. Its sort of like herding cats - most of it is a exercise in frustration.

    People seem to think that because MS releases a "beta" to a million people that somehow entails a beta test. It doesn't. Try submitting a bug report sometime - there isn't even a place to send them. MS releases "betas" to offer a technology preview and freeze competition, it has nothing to do with "testing."

  • Has anybody actually used Konqueror? I hear a lot of good stuff about it... but how 'bout the people who have actually used it step up and comment on how good it actually is, at this time. Let's all hear the pros and cons of Konqueror, and (for this discussion) compare it with Opera.

  • IMHO Opera made a perfectly valid design decision in concentrating on creating a browser that made the user important again, rather than investing excessive amounts of time and money attempting to second guess dodgy authors and chasing problems caused by the 'big 2'.

    Early Operas did have a problem that dodgy html could crash them, this was obviously unacceptable and has been fixed for quite some time. I think much of your comment is FUD (or at least based on old information), I use Opera 3.6 professionally every day of the week and I can't remember the last time Opera 'choked' on a page in a way that made it unusable.

    Standards is the only way to go, we'd all love to see a web where it doesn't matter what browser you use, and the end user has the freedom to choose their browser based on the features it offers, not the bugs it supports. That Opera took a stand on this, and made a commercial success in doing so is, without a doubt, fantastic. It's fantastic for Opera users, it's fantastic for the many Open Source browser projects (particularly the smaller ones without the resources to chase bug for bug compatibility) and it's fantastic for all end users on the web. Perhaps it isn't fantastic for lazy html authors, but who cares?

    Spending time and money on standards is a step forward, spending it on kludgy second guessing of authors is a step sideways, and quite probably one of the reasons that the Netscape codebase ended up in such a kludgy mess.

  • From reading their page, it appears that they're not even thinking about doing an Alpha version. Dammit. There's no good graphical web browser for Alpha Linux out there, and I was hoping that Opera would fill the void.


    I hope that this is merely a matter of limited resources, and not, like Netscape, a matter of the code being so thoroughly non-64-bit clean that it'll never work on an Alpha...
    --

  • That's what the beta period is for. It's better to let a few people find all the obvious bugs before releasing a public beta otherwise you end up getting a million bug reports straight away, all reporting the same obvious bugs.

    That's the way I read it anyway :)
  • Short interviews leave more time for coding, which is A Good Thing :)

    As for standards support - Opera the company is so standards oriented it becomes a pain - they have consistently refused to put into Opera 3.x any features that would violate standards, even if they'd let commonly-used pages be viewed in a legible form (i.e. IE and Netscape brokenness is out). I personally found this a pain in the neck as it meant I couldn't use Opera as my only browser, which messed up my bookmarking on Windows - however, it does mean they have some degree of commitment to this.

    Currently IE5 I think supports HTML 4.0 more closely than Opera 3.x, but they are working on Opera 4.0 which will be more standards compliant still.

    They also employ Hakon Wium Lie ('howcome') as their CTO - he was a key author of the CSS spec for the W3C. There's a press release about this on their News link.
  • It would be useful to have a 'break standards' button, so that people are aware when a site breaks standards (and maybe make it easy to send a polite email to the webmaster to complain about it), but can still kick down to at least view the page somehow. That would let Opera push for standards while also letting people get work done. My work PC is a laptop with a mere 96MB of RAM, and starting two browsers slows it right down...

    I use Opera 3.60 as my main browser on Windows, and I quite frequently have to switch to Netscape for some sites, typically those that use Javascript or Java. It rarely crashes, but it quite often doesn't display a page very well.

    I agree it's important to push webmasters towards better standards compliance, but not at the expense of users, some of whom will get fed up and just use Netscape. I can't really recommend Opera to non-technical friends and family because of its limited support for non-standard sites.

    As for IE and Netscape being broken in different ways, that's nasty - but why not have a 'try IE variant first then Netscape' or vice versa as an option for the 'break standards' button.
  • That's 2MB executable in debug mode, as the interview said - when compiled for release and stripped of symbols it may well come down a bit. Pretty impressive considering the size of IE and Netscape.
  • There is already a fairly common term for this - donationware. Makes sense to me and is fairly obvious. You can of course call something 'open source donationware' if it is in fact open source.

    Just like charities that give you badges when you put money in the collection tin, some donationware efforts could produce stickers/badges/certificates, as you suggest. Definitely a good thing to let people pay for if they want to.

    It would be cool if there was a website that let you get a customised image of the certificate/sticker, with your name on it, that you could then put on your website or print in colour perhaps.

    For an example of a lobbying organisation that has already done this, see my home page at http://www.bigfoot.com/~rdonkin/ - the image with the rather cheesy picture of a politician was generated because I said I would educate my local MP about the need for freely available encryption on behalf of Stand (http://www.stand.org.uk/).
  • If you used it for more than 5 minutes you'd discover it's fast, low in memory use, has a great way of disabling GIF/JPG downloads with a single click (ideal for slow websites or modem links), and also makes it easy to disable stupid web author formatting that makes sites illegible, again with a single click.

    It's as fast as IE5, and much better for slow links. Well worth paying for IMO.
  • Yes, but he already said that they are getting more email than they can handle.

    More testers = more feedback, so they spend more time looking at bug reports and less time coding.

    Thats the whole idea of a Beta test. Once they have got it stable enough to be used by everybody, they release the Beta. Then they gather info about the hard to find bugs, and squash them.

    I know it's difficult to understand, coming from an open source background. Closed source development is very different to open source :) With open source everybody gets to hack at the code, send in patches whatever. With closed source, the bugs are harder to pin down, because the people who can don't have the source code. This makes release cycles longer, and the code quality lower. Not that I'm dissing the Opera guys. I've used their browser on Windows, and I think it's very good, but it is closed source, so I doubt I'll use it on Linux.
    I actually voted for them to make a Linux version, and I said that I would pay for it. Back then I would have, but that was a long time ago, and a lot had happened. Now I won't use it, because there are many good open source alternatives available.
  • Why pay for a browser? well that's how opera has always been - they create a small, fast browser that works. IE 5 is free Microsoft crap, pardon me for being blunt. The reason that it works so well is because it's interlinked with special MS libs that are apart of the OS. Another potential factor in how "fast" IE is would be the inherit security flaws of a single user operating system. Internet Explorer can directly take devices, etc. When and where it wants to. Netscape crashes because it uses (for the most part) it's own cross platform libraries - I find it funny that people bitch and bitch and bitch about how unstable netscape is on windows. I use windows at work as a terminal, and netscape. Works great, I've had it up for three weeks until someone cranked up IE on my computer and it BSODed...
  • Well if the donation is optional, it's not really shareware. Shareware generally has a clause in its license requiring the user to pay money if they use the program. If the donation is an option (which it would have to be under the GPL) then it's still freeware.

    That said, there are a lot of applications out there that ask people for donations. The GNU homepage encourages donations to the FSF and the OpenBSD site does the same with regards to hardware.

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    "You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."

  • This fir sure will be a great idea ! and will gladly support it. The only problem is to whome will you donate the money ? some open source projects have many contributors, and hence will need a kind of "umbrella association". This is what the Apache Software foundation and Software for the Public Interest (Debian) might be for, and I will gladly send them some money.

    Khalid
  • I haven't used Konquerer BUT just type http://www.slashdot.org into kfm (the kde file browser for any who don't know) and I promise you'll be impressed. I have every confidence that the team that did this can and are going the rest of the distance.

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