I really wish promising technology couldn’t be seriously damaged simply by being “bought”. Perhaps there should be a law that says something like: fine, you ca

I really wish promising technology couldn’t be seriously damaged simply by being “bought”. Perhaps there should be a law that says something like: fine, you can buy this but you must permanently open-source a snapshot of that product from 2 years ago (ensuring some legacy regardless of your actions). Yes, Opera might be fine. It might even end up better. If history tells us anything though, new management can cause a lot of problems. The term “consortium” doesn’t exactly scream “experts at moving technology forward”. One of the companies where I worked was bought by a “consortium”, and I saw some very…interesting decisions made back then. Opera wasn’t special because of a dollar figure; it was special because of its attitude toward technology. If a consortium values return over anything else, they risk alienating too many of the people that made Opera successful.