Why Opera isn’t planning on going Open Source
19 CommentsPublished October 30th, 2006 2:24 AM EST By Daniel Goldman
Computer World magazine published an article today discussing why the Opera browser hasn’t been made open source yet and why there are still no plans to do so.
There are some heavy quotes from our CTO, Hakon Wium Lie (Father of CSS), in the article. As he pointed out, I think the main reason Opera isn’t open source is because there’s no business model for that yet.
Most open source projects that make a profit do so by charging for support service. Browsers aren’t that complicated to make users pay for a support service. And until we find a proper open source business model, going open source isn’t the logical step.
I’d love to hear what some of the big open source buffs have to say about this. What is their idea of a business model for Opera?
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Is there any reason to go open-source?
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Given that Opera’s advantage is purely technical, Lie might be right when he says there’s no easy way for Opera to transition to pure open source. If Opera gives away the secrets of its advantage by opening its source code, what revenue model is left for it?
Exactly. Mozilla’s situation is very unique and has little to do with being open source. People tend to forget that the main reason Mozilla is open source now is because Netscape released its unusable and bloated code; simply put, they throw it away because they didn’t know what to do with it in order to be competitive again. It took Mozilla 5 years of development to deploy a barely usable browser that even today does not provide cutting-edge features.
Which are the benefits of being open source in Mozilla’s case?. It’s by no means technically ahead of Opera, does not innovate (no, the extensions framework has nothing to do with being open source, it’s just an API), they can not make the source code run on devices/mobiles – opera’s main market – in a decent way (how many years has been minimo on “early stages of development”?) and average users do not care at all if the application they use is open source or not…
Mozilla’s relative success is not due to being open source (the marketing logo “open source” is only relevant for few people) so why all the “opera should go open source” fever that some people suffer from?.
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Mozilla makes millions through deals with search providers (google). I don’t know how much Opera earns from search engines (if at all), but it seems to work with Mozilla. But as is rightly pointed out, there is really no advantage right now for going open source.
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Opera has been making an interesting sum of money from it’s search deal with Google since 2002. In fact,Opera invented the very “pay for search” model with Google that feeds Fx’s (and many other browser company’s) coffers today. The problem is that Fx has many more millions of users driving the revenue into the stratosphere. It’s just about volume when it comes to search.
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AS an open source fan, I do not feel that everyone has to work according to one ideology. Opera seem like a reasonable company, with a great product so why not support them?
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I like Open Source, I use Open Source and I maintain Open Source software projects. But I’m pretty sure that Opera won’t benefit, as a browser, by going Open Source. Further, I don’t think Opera Software have seriously consider it at all.
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Nothing Opera can do will ever ben good enough to win over the vast amount of Firefox Junkies out there. These people say they’ll use it when it goes open source, just like they used to say they’d use it if it included an ad blocker, and they’d use it if the interface was minimilized.
The truth is that these people are just trying to rationalize their dislike of Opera. If Opera were to go open source, then these people would just find something else to complain about.
While being closed source isn’t the best of ways to approach the free software community (especially one based on open source software, such as Linux and FreeBSD), it is better for Opera’s future to keep their source closed. They don’t need to show the world all of the fancy tricks their use to render pages (I won’t mention page loading, as Firefox 2 has beaten Opera in that category). Opera is making good money on their rendering engine, and going open source would just spawn open source version of their rendering engine that would be available to Opera Software’s customers as a free alternative. This is not a good idea for a business dependant on it’s product for revinue.
Personally, I don’t think Opera should ever go open source. Being closed source isn’t even on my list of things I’d like to see changed in Opera…
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I hear that all the time, Opera is great, but it ain’t no open source. I don’t mind as long as the company cares about transparency and security issues as they did in recent years.
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The only real benefit to open sourcing Opera (as far as I can see) would be potential inclusion in Linux distros, which unfortunately probably isn’t a big enough market to do so.
Turn back the clock a couple of years to before the launch of Firefox 1.0, and open sourcing Opera may have been a great idea. With a marketing push, it’s possible that Opera would be in the position Firefox is now.
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[i]I won’t mention page loading, as Firefox 2 has beaten Opera in that category[/i]
uh?.
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Definitely keep the source closed. If you want an open-source application for browsing the web, you can use Firefox, Konqueror (on Linux), Safari (on mac), SeaMonkey, or whatever else. It doesn’t need hackers from all over the world contributing to its development, or you’d end up just like Firefox: a bigger browser with far less functionality out-of-the-box. Opera feels coherent, and that would end if it went open-source.
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I agree that Opera won’t gain much by open source.
Opera earns by licensing its presto engine to companies like adobe. Opera’s income are partly from the sales of its browsers in mobile phones and game console like Wii. Opera will definitely kill itself if it goes open source.
Mozilla’s success is just a lie, the truth is that Netscape gained nothing from open source.
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If that’s the case, then why doesn’t Opera offer decent API? If it were open source, wouldn’t it have supported extensions by now? Doesn’t FF being open source make it easier to write extensions?
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If Opera went open sauce, the sauce bottle would dry out and there’d be no more taste left. On top of that, it’s possible Firefox would be rummaging through the remains of the sauce bottle and learn how to print properly.
Firefox, to this day, has terribly buggy printing. If the sauce is opened, the fox will try to taste it and steal yet more features from Opera.
That being said, there is *nothing* on this earth like Firefox’s extension system. Too bad everything else is relatively poor.
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If that’s the case, then why doesn’t Opera offer decent API?
Why should they?. It’s a decision Opera made, they don’t want to open the browser to the potential security risks and performance issues that an API generates; I have no idea if they are going to provide it someday but designing a secure API that offers useful features to developers is a very complex task (and sometimes conterproductive).
Besides, keep in mind that they (and I guess most of the users too) prefer to implement the features themselves and smoothly integrate them into the core instead of relying on third party “contributors” (for example, people wanted web development tools in Opera and they are coming in the next release(s): 9.10, 9.20, whatever).
An API does not make your product better, it is just an interface for accessing core functions. Mozilla depends on extensions because they just offer a barebones browser; most of the extensions are lame attempts to provide the built-in features that Opera has, others are just gimmicks, and only a few of them are well designed and actually useful; those that are useful can be implemented by Opera itself much better than a third party developer using the API could, so why provide an API in the first place?.
My guess?, they will only provide an API if what they come up with is very secure and, at the same time, offers the option to implement useful features, quite a hard challenge…
If it were open source, wouldn’t it have supported extensions by now?
Both things are not related at all. Open Source != API
There are a lot of Open Source applications that don’t provide a way to be “extend” other than the source code itself.
Doesn’t FF being open source make it easier to write extensions?
Most people who write extensions don’t know what the source code looks like, they just use the framework provided by Mozilla.
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Opera shoulden’t go open source if it causes problems. The only problem I think opera has with not being opensource is the free software religious people (who doesen’t use proprietary software). I am a fan of open source and I know it can produce good software. But if it doesen’t benefite Opera Software, don’t do it. I don’t care if it’s open source or not. But if they found a way to do it and stil keep the cash comming in it would just be another reasone to use it. But I don’t see it happening any time soon since opera software earns monney on the rendering engine and the not-desktop operas.
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It would be great to have an open source/libre software version of Opera 5 or Opera 6. Especially Opera 6 – it was fast, small and reliable. It wouldn’t do any harm (monetarily speaking) to Opera (the company) to release the code for an old version of their product, but would do a great service to the FLOSS comunity.
ID software, for instance, usually releases old versions of their game engines as open source, and yet sales of Quake 3 or Return to Castle Wolfenstein don’t sink down because the source code for Quakes 1 and 2, Heretic and (DOS) Wolfenstein, is now open source!!!
However, the availability of the source has enabled enthusiasts and hackers to port these games to far more platforms than originally intended: I’ve seen Doom, Hexen, Quake 1 and 2, etc. running in BeOS, Syllable, several Linux flavours, all BSDs… and a LOT of hobbist/research operating systems!!!
I’ve also seen improvements to the original games: there is an openGL version of Doom with superb graphics, same goes with Heretic/Hexen, accelerated versions of Quake 1, etc.
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The core of Apple’s MacOSX is open source and that works for them. You can make an OS out of it but it won’t be anything like a mac because the rest is closed. Perhaps what Opera could do is the opposite: open source not the core, because its pretty proud of that, but the front end, the UI, so that it can be more extendable – something lots of people like in Firefox.
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Minisu, Opera does seriously consider the question of going Open Source, and fairly regularly. But as others have said, it hasn’t been clear there is a business model.
Extensions: In principle they are lovely. But making them so they don’t break with upgrades and maintaining our security record of which we are so proud is pretty difficult to make compatible with extensions a la Firefox. I think we have struck a reasonable balance – almost anyone I meet shows me their extensions and I ust show them how to do that with Opera out of the box (which means the upgrade hassles are removed, too). In a couple of cases there is something that is not available yet – not even via a panel, toolbar, userJS, or the like. All I can say is, watch out for new versions. We do keep working hard, and we are producing new tools, some of which are open source…
In my mind, a lot of the UI stuff is already open source. Themes, skins, panels, toolbars, keyboard or mouse files, and more.