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I thought their press release of less than a week ago said those people were supposed to improve WebKit :-) Can imagine that quite a few of those fired would have been tough to motivate, though. Nobody likes seeing their lifework put out and shot.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's assuming that what they said was said truthfully and not under the threat of a loaded gun. Opera the company shows signs of being on track be acquired (with the founder reportedly selling part of his shares to not have a majority stake anymore [1]) and management would probably like to minimize dissent and bad press. [1] http://gigaom.com/2013/02/12/opera-founder-sells-shares-pote...
What are you talking about? Loaded gun? Are you seriously suggesting that the company is using threats of physical violence to shut former employees up? Who cares about the founder? He previously said he wouldn't necessarily block an acquisition. And if Opera wanted to be acquired, why are they doing business like usual, and even buying up other companies?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "Those laid off are terrified to say anything publicly." I'm curious as to why? Norway doesn't seem like a place where people would fear their ex-employers.
I can only speculate, and I don't think that's particularly helpful. The 2010 downsizing was quite transparent. This time no ordinary employees seem to have the full picture of what exactly is going in.
Why would they be terrified of speaking in public -- and if they are, why are several people doing it?
You say that speculating is not particularly useful, and you still speculate that people are terrified of Opera Software, and that the company is lying to its investors about the number of employees?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Opera isn't switching to WebKit, it's switching to the Chromium codebase (which uses WebKit). Chromium is a full browser, so Opera is basically outsourcing it's browser development to Google (which aside from practically all Chromium work also does most WebKit work these days). This makes perfect business sense for Opera - why work hard to make a browser, when it can get one for free. As a plus, that browser uses Web…
They'll be using chromium to some extend, that doesn't mean it's going to be a chromium browser that's exactly like Chrome, Yandex, Torch, SRWare and what have you. That is what you seem to imply. As you probably know "some stuff on top of that" is rather broad in Opera's case, assuming they keep current functionality. If they have business sense they'll also want to keep their 300 million users, I doubt they'll do t…
It won't be exactly like Chrome, I never said it would - it will add stuff to it and remove some stuff. And I do think that can be a viable product that keeps many of their users.
I agree Opera might be more different than Chrome than SRWare for example. But it will still be 99% chromium in the core engine. To make significant changes in there would mean forking chromium and not being able to easily update from upstream - which would be silly.
It's worse than the article describes. Those laid off are terrified to say anything publicly. From what I can gather, the total may be double the quoted number. In addition, morale is at rock bottom, with a number of people leaving on their own. Opera as we knew it is gone. I worked for Opera for seven years, three of them managing the core testing team. I left a year ago. It breaks my heart to see how the current ma…
Well now, were those engineers not paid every month for a decade? What more does Opera owe them?
It's worse than the article describes. Those laid off are terrified to say anything publicly. From what I can gather, the total may be double the quoted number. In addition, morale is at rock bottom, with a number of people leaving on their own. Opera as we knew it is gone. I worked for Opera for seven years, three of them managing the core testing team. I left a year ago. It breaks my heart to see how the current ma…
It breaks my heart to see how the current management treats some of the best engineers I've ever met, loyal to the company for a decade, like disposable rubbish. Well now, were those engineers not paid every month for a decade? What more does Opera owe them?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What makes you think Opera is outsourcing development to Google? Just because something is using a framework doesn't mean they aren't using it to build their own thing on top of it. They are using Chromium as their browser. Chromium is a full browser, so basically almost all the work on Opera's new browser will be done by Google. That is why I said "outsourcing development to Google", but of course I didn't mean it…
You are misunderstanding what "using Chromium means." As I replied to cpeterso: Using the Chromium framework doesn't mean that you are using the actual final Chromium UI. The CEO himself said they're building a new UI. Differentiation doesn't take place in the browser engine. It take splace in the UI. Most people have no idea which engine they are using, and they don't care.
I disagree though about your saying differentiation not taking place in the engine. It takes place everywhere, including the engine.
It's worse than the article describes. Those laid off are terrified to say anything publicly. From what I can gather, the total may be double the quoted number. In addition, morale is at rock bottom, with a number of people leaving on their own. Opera as we knew it is gone. I worked for Opera for seven years, three of them managing the core testing team. I left a year ago. It breaks my heart to see how the current ma…
It breaks my heart to see how the current management treats some of the best engineers I've ever met, loyal to the company for a decade, like disposable rubbish. Well now, were those engineers not paid every month for a decade? What more does Opera owe them?
And when the company yields record profits, they are kicked out.
A little human decency would be nice.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Opera isn't switching to WebKit, it's switching to the Chromium codebase (which uses WebKit). Chromium is a full browser, so Opera is basically outsourcing it's browser development to Google (which aside from practically all Chromium work also does most WebKit work these days). This makes perfect business sense for Opera - why work hard to make a browser, when it can get one for free. As a plus, that browser uses Web…
Opera isn't switching to WebKit, it's switching to the Chromium codebase (which uses WebKit) All the articles I've read recently, including this article, all only mention WebKit. Where have you heard that they are switching to Chromium and not just WebKit? I'd be interested to read more about that.
By switching to WebKit/Chromium, Opera will not only become faster and more functional, but it will also allow its Norwegian developers to focus on the browser’s overall user experience.[1]
Notice that they seem to equate WebKit with Chromium, which isn't the case.
In my opinion (no based in knowledge of any kind) is that they are just ripping out Presto and replacing it with WebKit. I suspect that the next version of Opera will visually look similar to Opera now and will support most if not all the same functions (customizable menus, ad blocking, Mail client, etc).
[1] http://www.extremetech.com/computing/148312-opera-drops-pres...