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It's curious that the 4 bullet points in the final section don't make any mention of open source (in fact, the article doesn't at all). I think Opera Software

It's curious that the 4 bullet points in the final section don't make any mention of open source (in fact, the article doesn't at all). I think Opera Software circa 2012 was doing all of the things we would hope for/expect from Mozilla & Firefox, and doing them much better than Mozilla could. Bar one: it was not open source. When I made the switch to Firefox in 2012, it was my belief that I would not have been forced to switch browser had Opera originally been open source. I strongly believed in open source at the time; I used Opera in spite of that. When they shut down the Presto project, I lamented the loss due to the inability of the community to fork. I'm wondering if Firefox went away, would a fork be likely to survive in any impactful way; browsers are massive, complex & enormously expensive to maintain, whether you have rights to the source or not. Maybe open source isn't the panacea we thought in this particular context. I'm still on Firefox as I'm loathe to support any browsers built on Blink & contribute further to a monoculture, but the Vivaldi project have finally started to achieve similar things to what Opera was doing 8 years ago. It's notable that it's linked in blue in the section of this article headed "A better browser".

kome 6y ago
I did exactly the same. I switched to Firefox after Opera changed direction, with Opera 13. It's incredible how much Opera 12 was advanced and snappy. It was 2012... I used Firefox since then. And I never had an issue with it. But, especially at the beginning, I really felt it was an inferior browser. But still better than chrome for sure. Just because I don't want google to know all my chronology.
- inglor_cz 6y ago
  Opera Mobile worked great on Symbian smartphones with very limited screen resolution and system resources, too. Much better than the built-in Web browser from Nokia itself. Often, Opera Mobile was your only chance to get something done online on such a device. For example, purchase a ticket.
  - BlueTemplar 6y ago
    Not to mention the reduced data usage (literally ~10 000 times more expensive than today!)
- BlueTemplar 6y ago
  Yeah, Opera 12 is probably better than today's Firefox...
dec0dedab0de 6y ago
I felt the same way in 2002, and although I like opensource the reason I dropped opera was because it came with built in ads. I switched to phoenix, then firebird, then firefox, and have not looked back. Except for a year or so where i primarily used konqueror, but that was only because I was using kde and it was built in. The one cool feature i considered going back to opera for was built in torrent support, I really thought that would catch on.
- lucideer 6y ago
  Funnily enough I used Firebird/Firefox before Opera: I had avoided it because of the ads. It wasn't until they removed ads that I gave it a try.
- lucideer 6y ago
  The problem with Opera torrent support was ironically that it came at a time when torrent was big, and people who were "into" torrenting at that time didn't want it as a side-feature, they wanted something dedicated: either highly featurful or highly targeted, which are niches a side-feature of a multi-feature app like a browser doesn't really fill.
lmm 6y ago
> I'm wondering if Firefox went away, would a fork be likely to survive in any impactful way; browsers are massive, complex & enormously expensive to maintain, whether you have rights to the source or not. Maybe open source isn't the panacea we thought in this particular context. Even now Firefox doesn't feel like an open-source project in the traditional sense; it feels like its culture is still Netscape. It's still very much owned by a corporation that does most of the development. Konqueror shows that a proper open-source browser is or at least was possible. It always had an order of magnitude fewer developers than the competition, but was able to keep up by using better tools and frameworks and relentlessly keeping the code clean. Even today I wouldn't be surprised if it received more outside contributions than Firefox.

kome 6y ago

I did exactly the same. I switched to Firefox after Opera changed direction, with Opera 13. It's incredible how much Opera 12 was advanced and snappy. It was 2012... I used Firefox since then. And I never had an issue with it. But, especially at the beginning, I really felt it was an inferior browser. But still better than chrome for sure. Just because I don't want google to know all my chronology.

inglor_cz 6y ago
Opera Mobile worked great on Symbian smartphones with very limited screen resolution and system resources, too. Much better than the built-in Web browser from Nokia itself. Often, Opera Mobile was your only chance to get something done online on such a device. For example, purchase a ticket.
- BlueTemplar 6y ago
  Not to mention the reduced data usage (literally ~10 000 times more expensive than today!)
BlueTemplar 6y ago
Yeah, Opera 12 is probably better than today's Firefox...

dec0dedab0de 6y ago

I felt the same way in 2002, and although I like opensource the reason I dropped opera was because it came with built in ads. I switched to phoenix, then firebird, then firefox, and have not looked back. Except for a year or so where i primarily used konqueror, but that was only because I was using kde and it was built in. The one cool feature i considered going back to opera for was built in torrent support, I really thought that would catch on.

lucideer 6y ago
Funnily enough I used Firebird/Firefox before Opera: I had avoided it because of the ads. It wasn't until they removed ads that I gave it a try.
lucideer 6y ago
The problem with Opera torrent support was ironically that it came at a time when torrent was big, and people who were "into" torrenting at that time didn't want it as a side-feature, they wanted something dedicated: either highly featurful or highly targeted, which are niches a side-feature of a multi-feature app like a browser doesn't really fill.

lmm 6y ago

> I'm wondering if Firefox went away, would a fork be likely to survive in any impactful way; browsers are massive, complex & enormously expensive to maintain, whether you have rights to the source or not. Maybe open source isn't the panacea we thought in this particular context. Even now Firefox doesn't feel like an open-source project in the traditional sense; it feels like its culture is still Netscape. It's still very much owned by a corporation that does most of the development. Konqueror shows that a proper open-source browser is or at least was possible. It always had an order of magnitude fewer developers than the competition, but was able to keep up by using better tools and frameworks and relentlessly keeping the code clean. Even today I wouldn't be surprised if it received more outside contributions than Firefox.