I really don't understand why people who don't know the facts of cases like this (i.e., you don't have an inside knowledge of the nitty-gritty), jump to conclusions to readily. Aren't we supposed to be a community of rational, thoughtful people that use facts and evidence to backup opinions?
Do you stop using Google products when they get sued by various government agencies for things like collecting WiFi data? Why doesn't Google get the benefit of your doubt but not other companies?
What more do I need to know? Google has a thousand times as many employees, but when's the last time they sued one of them like this?
Were I in Opera's shoes, even if the ex-employee had blabbed something important to a competitor, I would say, "fuck that jerk" and keep on trying to make something awesome. Having ideas doesn't make companies great. It's making great things. A lawsuit is a waste of time and money for everybody involved.
That it is a non-profit is hardly meaningful. It's still a competitor, a competitor that seeks surplus revenues. It doesn't make the lawsuit any more or less valid.
> What more do I need to know?
How about the facts of the case rather than the surface-level circumstances? That's probably a start. I'm not saying Opera is in the right for this, but I think it's a bit premature to start casting heroes and villains in this particular narrative.
By your logic, I should really wait for the case to be resolved to have an opinion on it. That, again, is the right take for a judge. But personally, I think companies suing employees is almost always a bad idea, especially when a) it looks like a way of getting back at a competitor, and b) it could have a chilling effect on innovation. So if Opera wants me to not see them as bullies, they are welcome to make a statement about why they're suing. If they do that, my opinion may change, but I'm perfectly comfortable keeping my opinion.
That's an interesting reading of the former employee's story. According to his post, he entered into a consulting agreement with Opera in 2009 and between 2009 and the time his agreement was terminated in late 2010, "some of my design proposals will naturally be based on some of my older GB concepts."
I don't think anyone has enough information at this point to pass judgement on the merits of the case, but at a minimum, this looks like a pretty good example of what can go wrong when you involve ideas you've developed on your own in a consulting relationship, particularly when there's a chance you may want to further explore those ideas after the relationship ends.
Edit: according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation it is for-profit
The Mozilla Foundation, which owns the Mozilla Corporation, is a non-profit (which means several things in this instance, like the fact that it does not pay corporate income taxes and donations to it are tax-deductible).
Every so often, the Mozilla Corporation, pays dividends to its sole owner (the Foundation).
So one flow of money is as follows: The Mozilla Corporation has revenue, spends some of it on things like salaries, rent for offices, etc, pays taxes on what's left, then saves some of the rest for future capital expenditures and pays the rest out as dividends to the Mozilla Foundation.
Another flow of money is people donating directly to the Mozilla Foundation.
The Mozilla Foundation then spends the money it has on various things that futher its mission, including grants to various open-source projects and whatnot.
The reason the setup is what it is, as I understand, is that there were some questions as to whether some of Mozilla's revenue sources were OK for a legal nonprofit, precisely because nonprofits do not pay taxes on any excess of revenue over expenses. So this dual structure was set up to make sure that taxes were paid on anything that looked like profit from operations, just in case.
Note that in all cases there are no individuals who are getting paid the profits as there would be in a privately held company, nor are there shareholders involved apart from the Foundation.
All of which is to say that the term "for-profit" doesn't necessarily mean the entity's sole purpose is to maximize profit, or indeed to make one at all; it's simply a classification for tax law purposes...
As always, I am not a corporate tax lawyer (nor any kind of lawyer), and this is not legal advice. ;)
Except the minor detail that any for-profit is in fact legally OBLIGED to maximize profit for its shareholders.
A "non-profit" status simply gives the organization certain tax advantages because the state understands that the organization is acting on the best interest of the community, rather than its shareholders. But if a for-profit wants to do the same and not take advantage of said tax benefits, that's up to the shareholders to decide.
It's not an implicit nature, it's an explicit legal requirement.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Company#Sig...
A company can be created for many different purposes.
There are also various protections for minority shareholders in privately held companies to prevent majority shareholders from screwing them over.
And there are various rules about how the company's officers need to pay attention to the shareholders.
In this case, there is precisely one shareholder: the Mozilla Foundation. So the various minority-shareholder protection stuff does not apply, but the officers of the Mozilla Corporation do need to pay attention to what the Foundation wants the Corporation to do. And what the sole shareholder wants the Corporation to do in this case is decidedly not to maximize profit.
Still a lot of money, but they also claim that they lost $20M NOK because of this alleged breach and that's just $4M USD, which is when put in perspective - peanuts.
lawsuit is for 20 million NOK which equals roughly $3.4 million.
Opera is not seeing a traction as in some very good numbers. It's been always there as that browser some people use. Maybe innovating is not on their agenda anymore and they would rather be happy (or might scheme/plan) this way to be rather acquired for a good some.
HA! You must be new here.
Are you serious? They are giving you a free and awesome product and you find it annoying that they earn money marketing to you personally? But not annoyed enough to completely stop using their products....
1.) Not everybody thinks Google's products are so all-fired awesome across the board.
2.) Plenty of people find it very annoying to constantly be targeted by marketing everywhere they go. If it's free, you're the product - though that's not to say that simply paying for something protects you from abuse.
3.) Having a dig at someone for complaining about something but still using it is silly. Even if a given Google product is the best in its field, that doesn't necessarily make it the perfect solution.
Plus, there's the economic argument - if you've got to use Google whatever because you can't afford a paid alternative, you're essentially being made to participate in their marketing by not being able to buy your way out.
I'm not saying this is unique to Google, or that this is true across the board, of course, but it's not unreasonable in the slightest to be uncomfortable with the way they do business.
Only know this because I got into the habit of googling when I see something fishy. Usually takes 30 seconds to find out ~90% of them are flat-out false. Shame there's no downvote button.
OK. We just need to find the other 10.
Why do people get out of their way to use some marginal browser when there better both proprietary and open source options available?
Just to add to the web another slightly incompatible rendering engine? Or do they really like the gimmicky extras that Opera offers that much?
Gimmicky? Marginal? Not in the least. Sure, Opera, as a foreign, small, scrappy little software company wasn't able to knock off the behemoths of MSIE, Google/Chrome and Netscape-cum-Mozilla. But so what? The fact that they've been ahead of the feature curve as long as they have and are still in the fight is, to me, pretty dang amazing and quietly one of the most surprising stories in software in the last 15 years.
I've always been a fan of that resilient little Norwegian shop, and I'm sorry to see them (or, more than likely, their lawyers) get dragged into the unseemly world of lawsuits and recrimination. Hopefully this will resolve itself more amicably than it has started.
EDIT: I don't mean to be snarky or mean, but this bit made me SOL (snort out loud):
"..another slightly incompatible rendering engine?"
I find brand fidelity particularly nonsensical when a company is going downhill on the quality of its products.
Compared to Firefox, it actually makes decent use of RAM, doesn’t require fifty-five trillions of addons to work remotely properly (and hence doesn’t require updating of said fifty-five trillions of addons every other day) and a decent release cycle.
Oh, it also works on my phone and I just had to copy over wand.dat to get all my passwords there as well :-)
So? Do you still use Mosaic because it did first most of the important things Opera does now? How about sticking with IE, because it brought as AJAX first?
I never used IE. Because...IE.
Would you hypothetically not use a fast, super-compliant, feature-rich Mosaic out of an irrational bias?
No bias. I've tried to use Opera from time to time. Always stopped because:
1) Awkward UI. The QT theme engine it used (still has?) made it always look and feel off, in both Windows and OS X.
2) Some extra features (mail? download manager?) felt subpar compared to dedicated apps. Why would I need those in a browser anyway? That's why I stopped using Mozilla for Firefox 5-6 years ago.
3) The main operation of any browser, err, browsing web pages, was frequently hit with bugs, incompatibilities etc. I was always left out when browsing the more advanced HTML5 stuff, what with WebGL etc. And I never particularly liked the font rendering.
Some stuff I did like. But an incompatible engine and a bad look & feel didn't really entice me to keep using a browser. Mouse gestures etc, I could not care less, I find them gimmicky anyway.
This is simple: None are available (for me). They are (take your pick for your specific browser):
- Slow
- Memory-inefficient (i.e. they either use too much memory when I need it for other tasks or they use not enough when I don't need it and they could use it to provide a better experience, e.g. faster tab switching)
- Instable for my use case (50-100 tabs)
- Have no good mouse gestures (all the plugins for FF suck)
- ...For the most part Chrome or Fox or even IE10 behave similarly enough that I can almost use them instead of Opera. I think there's just 2 exceptions. Whenever I use another browser I find myself getting frustrated with 2 things: (1) Nothing happens when I "roll-left" over the mouse buttons (navigate back). (2) Tabs MORONICALLY cycle left-to-right, rather than in most recently used order. Both are show-stoppers for me, and I don't care if a plug-in can fix it, as long as Opera is otherwise more or less on par with the alternatives.
If you have 100 tabs open (I often do too) how do you switch to a specific tab with mouse gestures?
(Genuinely curious; seems a shame to have to specify, but I don't want to be misunderstood)
I have 16gb of ram on my pc, and regularly have >100 tabs open at any given time; I may be in a weird minority of some sort, but decent x64 support really makes my life a lot easier. I still load up Chrome and Firefox when I know I'm only going to be using them for a short/quick session, but as much as I like them, they just become awfully painful to use beyond that use case for me. Unfortunately, it seems Opera is following suit with the other vendors and is probably abandoning its x64 version, but at least they were the one vendor that pursued it enough to release something usable. Waterfox and the 'official' x64 builds of Firefox crash way too much for me to even consider. I understand the hell of trying to port to a 64-bit architecture when you're reliant on tons of old 32-bit libraries and such, but I really don't like this trend of staying overly complacent in the 32-bit realm when our hardware has been capable of more for a good while now...
When I'm on Linux however: Chromium all the way!
What is your apparently universal definition of "better," please?
For now it feels like a 'me too' product which simply exists in the market.
(Not to mention that Opera - the source tree and the product - is older than most of major browsers today, so technically others are the "me too" products...)
Most young people don't even care about an era when there parents read news on Emacs.
They might be the first to do something. But so was AOL to many things. Who(or how many compare to their competitors) uses AOL these days?
This. I started using Opera long before Chrome even existed. A basic thing: Hold the right-mouse button and click the left. It takes you back to the previous page. Chrome still doesn't do that.
It's the UI that I prefer, not the rendering engine.
The major reason that I use Opera is the built-in mail client. I have half a dozen email accounts and using multi-account login in Gmail is a bit of a pain. Having the email client built into the browser checks all my accounts for me (using IMAP) so I have one "Unread" tab open instead of 6 Gmail tabs.
Why do people go out of their way to use a marginal operating system when there are better both proprietary and open source options available? Just to add another completely incompatible platform for developers to target? Or do they really like the gimmicky extras (like genie-animated minimizations)?
(Note: Not making fun of the Mac, which I use everyday. Making for of the parent poster for his narrow-minded view point)
Integrated notes, integrated mail, clean interface. I've been using it since it was really early and while I can do similar things with other browsers I need a bunch of plugins to do so.
Automatic synchronisation of bookmarks and note across all my devices....
I use Chrome for flash and video because its architecture grants it a good bonus in responsiveness, but that comes at a high cost in memory consumption. I also consider it unsuitable for general use because it's so painfully unconfigurable. I can't even have a vertical tab bar, so I'm always left guessing what tab's what by their favicon and the first word of their title - a pretty major deal breaker for me.
I sometimes give Firefox a go, and while I find the range and power of its extensions very attractive, it somehow always fails to quite click for me. I'm sure I could get used to it, but while Opera's giving me much the same functionality in what I consider a nicer package, and with more provided out of the box, why go out of my way to switch? You might as well ask why I still use vim when emacs is clearly so much "better".
Not sure what other alternatives you'd have me use. IE? Safari? Neither are realistic options to consider for obvious reasons.
a.) a bookmark manager that doesn't suck (split view for life) b.) configuration dialogs that aren't boiled down to the utter newbie minimum, and a context menu that actually has a bunch of things in it c.) a GUI that's configurable like play-doh (even more so if you get into .ini files as well) d.) if that's your thing, there are skins available for it that seriously maximize screen estate
What are you calling gimmicky? And are all the CLI commands unix comes with gimmicks for you, too? Do you consider having more than one mouse button a gimmick as well? Heh.
I've recently developed some (parts) of Android framework for my current employer (which is as of now unique to this OEM phones) and I am seriously looking for a job change for various reasons. Now if my new employer hires me for the same role and I am asked to do the same thing again(and I'll mention this work on my resume and interview), I'll do it. Otherwise, what am I gonna do? Make railway engines for them or rockets or weave yards of fabric?
You are right, its not very prudent to make comments on sth sub judice.
But, let's not forget what kind of a lawsuit we are talking about here. As far as I can see it's a court case where an former employer(contracted job offer, not permanent) wants the employee in question not to do the job he knows to do.
>Do you stop using Google products....
Well, honestly many people do. And if I am not again seeing demons (:P ) many people who moved to FastMail for the biggest reasons - "privacy, pure email as in firm's passion for good email service"[1] - may see sth in it and may not find suh an Opera(which owns FastMail) to be the kind of company they thought was [1]. Again this is a far fetched speculation but at least I'm giving serious thoughts to it :-) (and I do not use Opera).
The idea of these companies, is there must be no one to disturb this status quo. There are instances where companies have acquired start up's just to kill them. Its because they understand given their own inefficiency and inertia they can probably never compete with some one small, good and agile.
These sort of acts only prove that the company is bad at getting stuff done- It exposes what looks like frustration with their own selves for being bad, and they sure realize that their competitors are better than them in converting ideas to usable products.
They know they had a good guy on on board, they knew he was better than others in their own company. They now think they own him- They expect him to do whatever work they want, at whatever price they wish to pay him- No questions asked. Now how dare this guy go and do whatever he likes, or work where he wants, while they own him and he owes them lifelong service???
That is the attitude.
There's a big difference between your old company and your new company both asking you to implement (for example) a unified search box, and your new company asking you if you can think of any clever new features they should implement and you suggesting the unified search box that you've been asked to build at your old company but which is not yet public information. The former is likely to be fine. The latter is fairly likely to be breaching your previous contract of employment.
I've no idea which end of the spectrum this particular case is closer to, which is why it's not a good idea to jump to conclusions before the details are out.
An IP or a potential IP(applied or under process for application) is an entirely different thing. This specifically binds you legally not to discuss openly.
And I think even the idea of suggesting a "search box" can be a legal matter iff you had signed a specific contact/nda for that. Otherwise it's well within your general knowledge of your field of expertise for which you were hired in the first place. Ofcourse no one can stop legal trolling.
Jumping to conclusions is a byproduct of discussion. Nothing bad I see in them. As an intelligent species we often conclude based on known facts and (un)intelligent and educated guesses, and often are proved right and wrong. Some ending up in each side.
I mean if it was just someone else copying their browser would they even be confident enough to take them to court?
And I guess all the internet connected services / devices they are using are equally "private and pure" - including their ISPs, their smartphones, their mobile service providers, online retailer they purchase things from.
There is such a rush to bless this guys post and chastise opera in these comments it is astounding. I don't understand the complete disregard for a balanced consideration of the facts.
I (and again, this is personal, lest someone drag my former companies into this) stand by my statements, as long as this lawsuit exists.
If the basic facts themselves are wrong, then of course I will back off my statement. If Opera is not suing an individual for ~$3.4MM USD for divulging trade secrets, then great.
Frankly, I'm surprised all around. Lawsuits in Norway are, by and large, less frivolous and for appreciably lower sums of money than in the US. I have no idea what they hope to gain from what is already a PR disaster, nor what court will entertain this suit.
The simplest justification there is: they think they're right. Is it so hard to conceive?
And until this thing goes to court, everybody should abstain from passing judgment on either party.
Actually, yes. Even if morally, then certainly not pragmatically.
> And until this thing goes to court, everybody should abstain from passing judgment on either party.
That doesn't make sense. Most suits settle out of court, after all. Should we wait to pass judgment every time a patent troll carpet bombs small businesses?
Why? I won't abstain from passing judgement to the party I think is in the wrong even AFTER this goes to court.
I don't think court decisions are necessarily the truth, and that I should agree with them. I only care about facts to make my personal judgment. If what he says is true, then even if the guy is convinced, I will still believe he is in the right.
(Heck, I don't even find all laws to be ethical. Segregation was law too at some point, for example).
Well, sure, but are you actually going to spend enough hours poring over the details in order to come to a reasonably well-informed personal opinion, compared with what a court will do? Courts are not perfect, but they're generally much better are sorting out the details than the media or random bloggers.
Not so sure. To continue the segregation example, for centuries (including today) courts have been shown time and again to be absolutely unfair in handing sentences to black people compared to white (even for the same exact crime). Or to rich people compared to poor (think O.J Simpson vs a homeless person accused of murder).
In this case of course we don't have that. But we do have another imbalance: the small guy versus a large company that can pay the best lawyers.
Plus, if one finds the very law someone is charged by unethical (e.g patent law), he doesn't even have to delve into the details of the matter to deem any sentencing unjust.
There are plenty of legitimate reasons for lawsuits from large corps to individuals. I have no idea if this is one of them. incidentally, that is why judges exist.
How long do trade secrets legitimately last in your view?
There is room for people to have different views on this.
> that is why judges exist
The law is not equal when the parties have very different levels of resources. The existence of judges does not change this.
The quality of evidence tends to outweigh the quality of lawyer, assuming reasonable competence.
(Annoyingly, I'd just changed over to Fastmail from Gmail. I hope Opera is in the right here otherwise I'll have to change again ...)
http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-RU-monthly-201103-201303
> Hey Chris, good to know for any consulting companies
> (like the OP's) that okcupid/IAC might want to hire!
> It's nice that you're not so concerned about trade secrets!
A more straightforward way to write your comment would be "Since you believe that the OP did not divulge trade secrets and are opposed to apparently frivolous legal action, you must not care about protecting your own trade secrets."
The problems with this position should be obvious.
Ok, I personally find this kind of lawsuit deplorable for 2 reasons:
(1) The world is better when people share ideas and don't try to claim ownership over them. If, while I worked at OkCupid, someone left my company and used "secrets" we held to start or improve a competitor, I would believe it was their right. And that I had failed to nurture their creativity or compensate them well enough.
(2) This is an individual being assaulted at a corporate magnitude.
Just one extreme to make your statement look silly.
A trade secret is... what?
Unlike a patent, if you competitor invents it independently, then it is no longer a trade secret. You are only protected against a restricted range of dodgy dealing, and then only if you took adequate security measures (employees under appropriate NDA, not obvious in your product, obfuscated if sourcecode, that sort of thing).
Some people say they are 'software patents done right'. Certainly they serve a different purpose.
It's also puts a bit more depth on Elon Musk's comments about not patenting technology developed within SpaceX[1], since the perceived patent infringers would laugh at any lawsuit and use the patents as a recipe (China, pseudo-state run companies therein, etc). They may not be patenting technology, but I bet there's quite a bit protected anyways as a trade secret.
[1]: http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-patents-2012-11
Also it would probably be faster to write a copy from scratch in rails than figure out the various dependencies for OKWS and SFSLite (unless that's really improved since I was there). :)
Or for that matter, concept ideas to implementation details. I for one would consider a case different if a past coca cola employee would start his own suger flavored drink, vs copying the cola recipe.