Sometimes never is better than late
Opera is free.
This story reminds me of another great (dead) browser … Netscape. It was a wonderful product, leader in its market (not the case of Opera obviously) when, sadly, Netscape’s management made the “single worst strategic mistake that any software company can make“. It’s not unusual a situation when a company’s management, with a good product, seems to blindly ignore what the market is saying, and what people want.
What do people want from a browser? Here’s the Firefox lesson: they want a browser:
- fast
- reliable
- free as free beer
- free as open to modifications, customizations, plugin-inization…
Opera was 1. fast and (quite) 2. reliable, but not free. And it was obviously a minor player in the market. Now it’s free but not yet open source. Guess what? Nothing it’s going to change. And when, on 2006, Opera will be open source, it will be far too late…
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