Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Opera claims ex-employee took trade secrets to Mozilla, sues him for $3.4M

thenextweb.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 74 posts

Re: Opera claims ex-employee took trade secrets to Mozilla, sues him for $3.4M

#31

Post by Shorel »

icebraining wrote: post #30
Shorel wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trond Werner Hansen is not a non-profit. In fact, he's not even a corporation. As a side note, 80% of features in Mozilla were first done in Opera. I even remember a Firebird (as it was called back in the day, before version 1.0) fan or zealot badmouthing Opera and its tabs as being a ridiculous and unnecessary feature. After just four months, that feature was copied. It seems that crowd has not changed even a little…

I don't think the event you describe was possible, because Mozilla had tabs before Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox even existed. In any case, Opera copied the tabs from other browsers too, so I'm not sure what's your point with that story. By the way, it wasn't just about the OSS license. Back in the day Opera had a big honking ad right in the main window. They only released an ad-free version in 2005, when Firefox already…

I have tried to find said discussion in vain. It's more about the attitude of Firefox users against Opera than anything else.

That big ad is a sad bit of Internet history. A wasted opportunity.

Also: they had a deal with Google to make it the default search engine before Firefox had one.

Re: Opera claims ex-employee took trade secrets to Mozilla, sues him for $3.4M

#34

Post by Indyan »

easytiger wrote: post #8

Hard to say anything without hard details, but in Europe this stuff can be hard to make stick. Also this kind of actioning is distrubing from a company like opera. Death throes?

He has denied the allegations (as expected). But, at the same time, he also told this to Digi.No.

"When I left the Opera, I did not feel my ideas bore fruit, and I also notified management about. I am a very creative person and I feel that my ideas had value. I would like that my ideas were to reach users".

Source: http://www.digi.no/915782/opera-saksoker-eks-ansatt

Re: Opera claims ex-employee took trade secrets to Mozilla, sues him for $3.4M

#35

Post by gcp »

Shorel wrote: post #31
icebraining wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the event you describe was possible, because Mozilla had tabs before Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox even existed. In any case, Opera copied the tabs from other browsers too, so I'm not sure what's your point with that story. By the way, it wasn't just about the OSS license. Back in the day Opera had a big honking ad right in the main window. They only released an ad-free version in 2005, when Firefox already…

I have tried to find said discussion in vain. It's more about the attitude of Firefox users against Opera than anything else. That big ad is a sad bit of Internet history. A wasted opportunity. Also: they had a deal with Google to make it the default search engine before Firefox had one.

It's more about the attitude of Firefox users against Opera than anything else...they had a deal with Google to make it the default search engine before Firefox had one.

"Selling out": Opera had it first!

Re: Opera claims ex-employee took trade secrets to Mozilla, sues him for $3.4M

#36

Post by homosaur »

fosap wrote: post #24
jfoster wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically true, but they are 100% owned by a non-profit. (Mozilla Foundation owns Mozilla Corporation)

Consider even the NFL is non profit, non profit hardly means anything.

I feel what you're saying on this since the pro leagues being nonprofits seems silly on the surface but you could say that about any trade organization really. The US has a real problem with what's allowed to define itself as non-profit (scam religions like crack churches and Scientology, fake athlete charities, etc) but I don't think Mozilla falls in that camp.

Re: Opera claims ex-employee took trade secrets to Mozilla, sues him for $3.4M

#37

Post by homosaur »

icebraining wrote: post #11
eliasmacpherson wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just a US concept. Norway seems to have fairly strong protections on the expression of ideas - i.e. you can't copyright ideas in many cases. I wonder do they have special laws for trade secrets. Opera are going to have difficulty hiring people if they are suing former employees.

Pretty sure you can't copyright ideas anywhere.

Be sure to let the US Patent Office know about that.

Re: Opera claims ex-employee took trade secrets to Mozilla, sues him for $3.4M

#38

Post by whafro »

homosaur wrote: post #37
icebraining wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure you can't copyright ideas anywhere.

Be sure to let the US Patent Office know about that.

The USPTO is likely well aware that they have nothing to do with copyright, just the Patents and Trademarks mentioned in their name.

Re: Opera claims ex-employee took trade secrets to Mozilla, sues him for $3.4M

#39

Post by yareally »

icebraining wrote: post #30
Shorel wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trond Werner Hansen is not a non-profit. In fact, he's not even a corporation. As a side note, 80% of features in Mozilla were first done in Opera. I even remember a Firebird (as it was called back in the day, before version 1.0) fan or zealot badmouthing Opera and its tabs as being a ridiculous and unnecessary feature. After just four months, that feature was copied. It seems that crowd has not changed even a little…

I don't think the event you describe was possible, because Mozilla had tabs before Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox even existed. In any case, Opera copied the tabs from other browsers too, so I'm not sure what's your point with that story. By the way, it wasn't just about the OSS license. Back in the day Opera had a big honking ad right in the main window. They only released an ad-free version in 2005, when Firefox already…

I think he perhaps means tabs with a true document interface[1] (i.e multiple web pages can be opened within the same application window and be resized, moved, tiled, and cascaded like normal application windows in the operating system).

Edit: Seems Opera added tabs slightly before Mozilla after looking it up out of interest[2]. Also just some random history on tab integration in web browsers. Mozilla 0.9.5 added them a few months after Opera 4 in 2001, though of course neither was the first. I guess one can say Opera was the first browser to add them that is still a fairly popular browser in present day.

Four years later, in 1994, BookLink Technologies featured tabbed windows in its InternetWorks browser. That same year, a text editor called UltraEdit also appeared with a modern multi-row tabbed interface. The tabbed interface approach was then followed by the Internet Explorer shell NetCaptor in 1997. These were followed by a number of others like IBrowse in 1999, and Opera in [June] 2000 (with the release of version 4 - although a MDI interface was supported before then), MultiViews October 2000, which changed its name into MultiZilla on 1 April 2001 (an extension for the Mozilla Application Suite[7]), Galeon in early 2001, Mozilla 0.9.5 in October 2001, Phoenix 0.1 (now Mozilla Firefox) in October 2002, Konqueror 3.1 in January 2003, and Safari in 2003. With the release of Internet Explorer 7 in 2006, all major web browsers featured a tabbed interface.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_of_the_Opera_web_brows...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabbed_browsing#History

Re: Opera claims ex-employee took trade secrets to Mozilla, sues him for $3.4M

#40

Post by yareally »

smoyer wrote: post #13

Their lawsuit claims that "Opera Software ASA is an innovative company which has developed software and technology which have proved to be successful internationally". The article talks about features which aren't really IP. Perhaps their trade-secrets relate to coding and construction methods that make their product superior, but these really can't be protected unless they're so esoteric that no one would logically…

> ... show me more innovation (and market-share) than Mozilla and then maybe I'll believe you're the innovator.

I was surprised, but Wikipedia has a nice article in reference to Opera's features[1]. It even lists most of the dates the features were added/created. Opera also has a fairly large mobile market share[2], which is where Opera has traditionally pushed their browser more so than the desktop since the mid 2000s.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_of_the_Opera_web_brows...

[2] http://9to5mac.com/2013/04/03/safaris-mobile-browser-market-...

Post reply on HN