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

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

#51

Post by mpyne »

DannyBee wrote: post #46
mpyne wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The NFL leaque headquarters organization is a non-profit. The actual teams , on the other hand, are all profit-seeking entities and pay taxes accordingly.

False: The green bay packers are also a non-profit. The whole thing is a fairly weird set up designed to avoid antitrust scrutiny and taxes. The NFL org just plows any profits back into the teams.

> The whole thing is a fairly weird set up designed to avoid antitrust scrutiny

Well in that regard they failed, as the Congress passed laws decades ago quite specifically exempting the professional sports leagues from antitrust claims relating to sports broadcasting rights, and that was in response to a Supreme Court ruling on the antitrust problems with the NFL.

And now with the NFL Network people are looking closely into whether that antitrust exemption should be retained at all. So I think it's hard to claim that the NFL is managing to use this to avoid antitrust scrutiny; if anything the NFL is bringing even more of it on themselves.

> The NFL org just plows any profits back into the teams

Which then shows up as extra income for the teams, which increases their profit (except for the Packers), which leads to higher taxes, etc. etc.

I'm sure you can play accounting tricks to reduce the impact of the extra income but I see nothing weird by itself with having a League office to handle League-wide affairs that don't involve individual teams.

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

#52

Post by at-fates-hands »

Indyan wrote: post #34
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

This is probably closer to the truth. Seems like Opera is acting more like a jilted lover than anything else. Guy has some good ideas and in the interest of profit, they get buried. He goes across the street where Mozilla sees the potential and implements them and now Opera wants he to pay up for them?

I'm all for keeping trade secrets, but this more along the lines of abstract ideas, not the sort of thing you'll have an easy time in a court of law proving.

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

#53

Post by papsosouid »

pavanky wrote: post #41
sudhirj wrote: post #2

Opera gets in bed with Google Chrome and then sues the other camp? I thought they were above all this. Either way, an idea for a browser feature is hardly a huge industrial secret - Webkit, Blink and Gecko have near-parity on features, and are competing more on speed. How would this stand up in court? Neither Google nor Opera have anything to gain from this - what could be the economic rationale?

> Opera gets in bed with Google Chrome and then sues the other camp? I thought they were above all this. They are suing their former employee, not Mozilla. > Webkit, Blink and Gecko have near-parity on features, and are competing more on speed The former employee is an artist and a musician. The article says he worked on UI related stuff. None of this has anything to do with the web engine the browsers run. You are t…

I'm amazed at how bad the comments are here. Pretty sad seeing only one sane, reasonable post in a sea of conspiracy theory bullshit and bitter resentment.

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

#55

Post by marshray »

steven2012 wrote: post #49
sudhirj wrote: post #2

Opera gets in bed with Google Chrome and then sues the other camp? I thought they were above all this. Either way, an idea for a browser feature is hardly a huge industrial secret - Webkit, Blink and Gecko have near-parity on features, and are competing more on speed. How would this stand up in court? Neither Google nor Opera have anything to gain from this - what could be the economic rationale?

Google funds basically all of Mozilla's budget, something like $300M/yr. Google does not consider Mozilla a rival. If they wanted to destroy Mozilla, they would just need to not renew their funding agreement.

Do you have any idea how much money Mozilla has in the bank?

It's very hard to "destroy" a not-for-profit that has a substantial endowment.

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

#56

Post by eclipticplane »

DannyBee wrote: post #46
mpyne wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The NFL leaque headquarters organization is a non-profit. The actual teams , on the other hand, are all profit-seeking entities and pay taxes accordingly.

False: The green bay packers are also a non-profit. The whole thing is a fairly weird set up designed to avoid antitrust scrutiny and taxes. The NFL org just plows any profits back into the teams.

> False: The green bay packers are also a non-profit.

There's a lot more to the Packers' ownership; technically they are for-profit in Wisconsin due to state laws, but operate as a non-profit that issues stock. The stock does not have dividends, technically can only be transferred to family members, and has a per-person cap. Other teams can only have a few dozen joint owners; the Packers have something like 150,000 distinct "owner" shareholders that vote on things like stadium enhancements, etc. This is also why they haven't been moved from Green Bay -- too many rabid fans own shares that would never approve a move from Green Bay.

They are the only major sports team in the US to be structured anything like it.

Profits, as indicated on their public books, are either put back into the stadium/city development or go toward another non-profit that's quite active in Wisconsin.

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

#57

Post by fakeer »

sudhirj wrote: post #2

Opera gets in bed with Google Chrome and then sues the other camp? I thought they were above all this. Either way, an idea for a browser feature is hardly a huge industrial secret - Webkit, Blink and Gecko have near-parity on features, and are competing more on speed. How would this stand up in court? Neither Google nor Opera have anything to gain from this - what could be the economic rationale?

FastMail users might find this Opera a little less pleasant to the ears. Just an observation not related to the browser.

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

#58

Post by fakeer »

pavanky wrote: post #41
sudhirj wrote: post #2

Opera gets in bed with Google Chrome and then sues the other camp? I thought they were above all this. Either way, an idea for a browser feature is hardly a huge industrial secret - Webkit, Blink and Gecko have near-parity on features, and are competing more on speed. How would this stand up in court? Neither Google nor Opera have anything to gain from this - what could be the economic rationale?

> Opera gets in bed with Google Chrome and then sues the other camp? I thought they were above all this. They are suing their former employee, not Mozilla. > Webkit, Blink and Gecko have near-parity on features, and are competing more on speed The former employee is an artist and a musician. The article says he worked on UI related stuff. None of this has anything to do with the web engine the browsers run. You are t…

Really? How do you know it's not a conspiracy theory? You don't know that and so does OP.

Hell, it's not even a conspiracy theory. OP just shared his point of view, you don't agree to it, it's fine. But please don't pick bs from a comment where there's no bs. It's almost as pathetic as name calling.

You are looking for a conspiracy theory? Here's one: Do you for sure know that Eric Schmidt didn't invite Opera board to a dark abandoned bungalow for a meeting and convinced them to pinch in Mozilla's hind in a proxy manner, promising to acquire(for a BIG sum) and kill Opera in return?

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

#59

Post by fakeer »

steven2012 wrote: post #49
sudhirj wrote: post #2

Opera gets in bed with Google Chrome and then sues the other camp? I thought they were above all this. Either way, an idea for a browser feature is hardly a huge industrial secret - Webkit, Blink and Gecko have near-parity on features, and are competing more on speed. How would this stand up in court? Neither Google nor Opera have anything to gain from this - what could be the economic rationale?

Google funds basically all of Mozilla's budget, something like $300M/yr. Google does not consider Mozilla a rival. If they wanted to destroy Mozilla, they would just need to not renew their funding agreement.

Google hugely benefits from Mozilla search deal. I am sure companies like Amazon, Yahoo and Bing shall jump to the opportunity.

Firefox, IMHO, is one real challenge to Chrome with IE to be outed the day most of the Internet is educated to better software and starts to learn making choices in a broad manner. Safari not counted of course. So, as I said that leaves Firefox and Chrome in the arena. And a Firefox wounded with a financial blow shall be meat for Chrome. Things that's keeping Firefox in race and that is innovation, freedom, privacy advocacy. Without much money in the bank or boggled with court cases it's going to be real hard.

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

#60

Post by sltkr »

rurounijones wrote: post #4
sudhirj wrote: post #2

Opera gets in bed with Google Chrome and then sues the other camp? I thought they were above all this. Either way, an idea for a browser feature is hardly a huge industrial secret - Webkit, Blink and Gecko have near-parity on features, and are competing more on speed. How would this stand up in court? Neither Google nor Opera have anything to gain from this - what could be the economic rationale?

"Opera gets in bed with Google Chrome and then sues the other camp? I thought they were above all this." These two things are not linked, stop trying to make it so.

It seems at least tangentially related considering in that they probably wouldn't have sued Firefox if they had just decided to switch to the Gecko browser engine. (Or if Hansen had supposedly divulged trade secrets to the Chrome team).
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