I use Opera on the desktop and on my mobile devices. So does my wife. I'm not going to stop using it because of a lawsuit, let alone for one that has not had any facts proven in a court.
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 I know from this and the news articles is that Opera has sued a former employee for $3.4 million because they think he gave secret information to a nonprofit. The guy hasn't worked there full time since 2006, but Opera has decided to seriously fuck up his life.
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.
> ...because they think he gave secret information to a nonprofit.
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.
It doesn't make the lawsuit more or less valid. But that's for courts to decide. It does make Opera more a jerk for pursuing it, which is what I am focusing on here.
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.
> The guy hasn't worked there full time since 2006, but Opera has decided to seriously fuck up his life.
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.
While reading, this was my conclusion too. If he wrote down the ideas somewhere, he could prove that the ideas and concept was original his. Even in Europe, disclosing ideas early can be useful, as it protects oneself from trade secret claims.
The Mozilla Corporation is a "for-profit" entity, which mostly means it pays taxes on its profits, if any.
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. ;)
> 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...
Except the minor detail that any for-profit is in fact legally OBLIGED to maximize profit for its shareholders.
That is incorrect. Any company must act in the best interest of its shareholders. A publicly-traded company must maximize profit because that's the implicit nature of it: I buy stock in the market because I want a return on my investment. But if all shareholders of a given company (say, Mozilla) want to produce something for the good of the Internet and not make a profit, that's up to the 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.
Even if that were true, only the shareholders would have standing to sue them for failing to maximize profit. Clearly the only shareholder, the Mozilla Foundation, is not going to sue Mozilla Corporation for doing what the shareholder wants it to.
You're confusing "for-profit" and "publicly traded". It's commonly held that publicly traded companies should be maximizing shareholder value (which is not necessarily the same as profit), because that's the purpose of publicly traded corporations.
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.
It is fairly common for non-profits to own for profit subsidiaries which often become the main sources of revenue and sustainability for the non-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.
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.
yes I am one of the many, check out owncloud if you want to download your data and setup your own cloud. Its pretty easy to setup. As for search, If you are not anti MSFT bing does a decent job on most topics, if you are, in that case duckduckgo, and many other engines out there are not too shabby either. I really want an alternative to youtube. Tired of being raped with 30 second ads for every vid I watch.
I for one have started shedding the Google products. Im slowly switching to alternatives. I find Google creepy company and don't like being sold. I have 2 products left to drop.
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.
This is a better response that mine. I'll add to 1) by commenting that UI design is often unfriendly. It's better than it used to be but its not nice to use and looks ugly. It took several minutes for myself and someone else to find the forward button in gmail 2 days ago after the latest redesign hid it in a menu.
I hate adverts so very very much. If prefer to pay google money than have them. And targeting adverts when in gmail is not right. Which products are awesome that don't have a pretty-damn-close competitor? I'd say that search was the only one. Advertising's reach, continual harassment and unrealistic offerings turn me right off.
If I had to guess, Maps and GMail. I've been trying to get rid of Google as well, and there aren't really any good alternatives to Maps and changing email addresses is a hassle.
Gmail is used as a dumping ground - its basically a backup for my @me/@ucloud accounts. I do find it harder to track down old emails, but way easier to send new and receive new ones - the use of symbols and random changes google makes to gmail are irritating. The other is (off all things) blogger. I have a huge collection of years of work related problems and solutions. This will be moved soon.
Maps I don't really miss at all - where I am Apples are just as good for my occasional needs.
Unfortunately facebook is filled to the brim with outright false postings and millions of people jumping to conclusions to argue based on them.
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.
Everything I like about FireFox (gestures, tabbed browsing, a reasonable bookmark manager), Opera did first. I used Opera for years back when it flat killed Netscape and IE for features and standards compliance. I only left once FireFox implemented all of the same features I had come to rely on in Opera, PLUS developing its growing add-on ecosystem.
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):
Opera's earliest claim to fame, back in the godawful days of the real incompatibility wars, was its near-religious adherence to W3 standards. A lot of web developers in the late nineties/early oughts would use Opera as the benchmark browser, and then resolve various quirks-mode issues from there. If it worked in Opera, you could be reasonable sure the problem wasn't with your code, but with a quirk that you were about to have to fork your code on, for Netscape or IE.
Opera might have been ahead in the past, but is it still ahead? Having tried their browser, I must have missed something because I think Firefox with addons is way better.
I find brand fidelity particularly nonsensical when a company is going downhill on the quality of its products.
Compared to Chrom(e|ium), I don’t get crashes on every other website, a decent release cycle, a decent repository and, you know, a browser that does what I want rather than forcing me to want what it does. Oh, and a functional speed dial.
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 :-)
I wouldn't say they're all that terribly behind. I use Opera daily and rarely have issues with websites. The last really big issue I remember was the Twitter fiasco when they found out Presto wasn't prepared for a Javascript file that was larger than average and only had a single statement because replacing semicolons with commas became the cool thing to do.
>Everything I like about FireFox (gestures, tabbed browsing, a reasonable bookmark manager), Opera did first.
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?
If Mosaic had a current version with a rendering engine and enclosing feature set as competitive as the current Opera is vs. Chrome and FF, yeah I might. But, as I said, I don't even use Opera right now, only because FireFox's add-on ecosystem makes it the better choice. But otherwise Opera is still a competitive, high-performing browser, and completely reasonable choice for the discriminating nerd.
I never used IE. Because...IE.
Would you hypothetically not use a fast, super-compliant, feature-rich Mosaic out of an irrational bias?
>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.
> Why do people get out of their way to use some marginal browser when there better both proprietary and open source options available?
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)
- ...
I've used Opera for a long time, and when I started using it it was simply alone on top of a lot of crap browsers. Now there are several decent alternatives, all of which are very frustrating for me. I work on multiple computers and have multiple computers at home. I'm lazy. Hence, no plugins should be required, so I get the experience I want installing just the browser.
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.
I acknowledge your point on the tabs, but not on the gestures. It provides a genius way execute actions, probably faster than anything else. I would almost say that is a fact, and that if you don't agree then it's because you haven't used it.
At 7 billion people on this planet, there well may be enough ‘bizarro outliers’ who don’t want a Mac OS X-like browsing experience to justify a special browser.
Aside from the other reasons already mentioned here, I'd like to point out that it's also the only browser that seems to have a competent 64-bit implementation for Windows at the moment. This is literally the only reason I migrated to Opera not too long ago.
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...
Was this meant to be a response to my question to `coldtea, or a general comment? The exact same words could be used by an IE user describing Chrome, or a Windows user describing OS X. They make no reference to "better."
(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...)
I'm probably what most people would consider young (22), but I see your point. But 'me too' has a very specific connotation of entering a market late because everyone is doing it, at least to me, which is the opposite of what Opera has done.
Or do they really like the gimmicky extras that Opera offers that much?
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.
Exactly. I'm trying to use other browsers too and stuff like these, like the way how ctrl+tab works, or, especially!!!, tabs thumbnails (seriously, this is the best thing ever) are keeping me coming back to Opera
Uhh, maybe you should try that in Chrome. The very first item on the drop down menu that comes up is the back button and no you don't need to release right click to click on it. Also, it's even faster than Opera, you can just right click and then release it over back and not have to left click at all.
It's not using 'back'. It's a 'rocker' gesture to navigate between tabs. Right click anywhere, then left click while holding it, move to the left tab. And vice versa.
Why do people get out of their way to use some marginal browser when there better both proprietary and open source options available?
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)
Opera Mini has a proxy server it uses to compress data before it reaches your device. This is extremely useful when using mobile data because it's both faster and cheaper. (At least, in Australia, where mobile Internet is both slow and expensive)
> Why do people get out of their way to use some marginal browser when there better both proprietary and open source options available?
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....
Going out of my way would be switching browsers when I'm happy with the one I've used since 2001.
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 don't pay much attention to usernames, and yet I constantly see yours. Because virtually every post you make is totally non-constructive and unnecessary. Please stop. I am tired of reading absolute trash posts like that and thinking "gee, bet its coldtea again".
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).
Something like 99% of all large corporation middle management at their very best can do nothing apart from maintaining status quo. Come in, run affairs as usual and leave. This includes pretty much every one even at the (S)VP levels. This is why good folks are always the biggest asset and threat to the company.
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???
> 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?
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.
I doubt the latter case is not a breach of contract IMHO. The thing is, my job is not to implement a search box when I'm told to, but my job is also to tell my employer that a search box is needed when asked about s possible new feature - AAMOF I think the latter is more important part of my job.
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.
Not only that, but aren't the kind of things he's accused of stealing those that would be covered by fairly weak software patents? I don't think we're talking about him really using his insider knowledge of when they're planning to release a feature to beat them to market or scupper their PR.
I mean if it was just someone else copying their browser would they even be confident enough to take them to court?
I wouldn't worry to much. This is Norway, not the US, and our courts aren't quite as corruped-by-corporations, yet, as are yours. Do a little research on the DnB vs Røeggen case where the latter recently won a crushing victory in the Supreme Court, and ask yourself if there's any way that case could have been won in the US, against the largest US bank.
> many people who moved to FastMail for the biggest reasons - "privacy, pure email as in firm's passion for good email service"
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.
Right, because justice tends to be a one-sided story. Let's be clear that all you are basing your opinion on is an abridged, single viewpoint account of events.
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.
Unfortunately, justice is a one-sided story when large companies sue individuals or tiny companies at large corporate magnitudes. A defense alone can be financially devastating. Second, sadly, it's for "trade secrets" in the the world of software. Come on!
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.
Just to be clear: you're standing by your statement that you don't need any more info to decide that Opera is in the wrong here. They're categorically in the wrong, as long as they are actually suing an individual for divulging trade secrets. There is literally no more information that would change your mind if you heard it.
I agree with you in principle, but I have to admit I'm not sure what justification Opera could have for this type of vendetta-esque suit.
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?
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?
>And until this thing goes to court, everybody should abstain from passing judgment on either party.
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).
> 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.
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.
>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.
Compared to...? An individual leaving a large company and giving our legitimate trade secrets to a competitor company potentially ruining revenues (and thus salaries) for thousands?
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.
maybe you should think about not spilling company trade secrets to competitors. I'm not trying do defend Opera, but if an (ex) employee ( be it contractor or not) revealed or used the same thing that he developed for my company while i was paying him , i would probably sue him too. Now ... in this case there are a lot of missing facts, but in the general case, when it's about a lot of money , i think any sane CEO would decide to sue.
Yes, but are they running opera mobile? My understanding was that it lost popularity when the government stopped allowing people to use it to jump the GFW.
The linked article contains no real numbers on marketshare, just a million "hits" out of what...a billion? That would explain why I don't know any opera users.
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!
> 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!
Snideness is unbecoming.
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.
Thanks! Actually, I'm happy to address this comment now that it got your positive rephrasing. But first I should add I no longer work at OkCupid, and even if I did, the company is far bigger than one person's opinion. What I'm stating on HN is my personal opinion, not OkC's.
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.
How about a contractor selling the okc source code tree to some Chinese "entrepreneur" who launches a copycat site in China that somehow gains 300M members within a year?
Just one extreme to make your statement look silly.
If you have an idea and keep it secret, it is protected from some reverse engineering or industrial espionage as a trade secret.
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.
Given the biggest "trade secret" on OkCupid is the matching algorithm and its laid out so that anyone who wanted to would be able to implement it, I bet he would be pretty excited to hear that 300M people in China found his idea awesome.
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.
That's not a trade secret. A trade secret would be for instance if the Google co-founders did not patent PageRank and kept secret the way the ranked search results in Google.
I wish I could read the comments here without thinking "wow, the quality of reddit really has declined a lot", and then realizing "holy shit, this is HN".
