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At my previous employer, a small browser vendor that decided to abandon its own rendering engine and browser stack, I stopped using our product because Linux wa
by andreastt 13y ago
At my previous employer, a small browser vendor that decided to abandon its own rendering engine and browser stack, I stopped using our product because Linux wasn't a priority. Numerous reasons were given, such as low market share, “only geeks use it”, all journalists use Macs, &c.
This was to the point of ridiculing the platform and the people working on it, frequently citing “Linux jokes” such as “you'll probably have to recompile your kernel first” whenever the question was seriously raised about when we'd start at least getting the core libraries working.
And when I say it wasn't a priority, I mean that we didn't even have something that was in a compilable state. A few people had started fixing up the broken code to get something that would compile on Linux in their own free time. After a few weeks of hacking, they were told by management to stop what they were doing and instead focus their volunteer efforts on the project goals, being to ship a Windows and Mac version.
So the company began the process of forcefully moving developers who'd worked on Linux for over 15 years to platforms they felt uncomfortable and unproductive working on.
This is a much longer tale, but it tells the story of a company alienating not only their loyal user base, but also a significant proportion of their own developers. The result? Lack of motivation and resignations.
Well done.
- lurkinggrue 13y agoWow, Sounds like you used to work at Opera.
- lproven 13y agoReally? You think? Gosh. If only this were /. & I could award you +1 for being so insightful. @OP: sad story. I am a little surprised, a little disappointed, and sad that it's only a little.
- mongol 13y ago+1 Funny
- lurkinggrue 13y agoI'm detecting a slight note of sarcasm there.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- svennysven 13y agotbh I don't want opera chrome on my laptop. I'll keep using opera 12 for now, untill I make the complete migration to my chromebook. I will still use an arch linux powered laptop for owncloud, with opera 12 on it as long as opera 12 will work.
- guitarman 13y agosounds like Opera to me, too. And if this is the case, it's really sad, I am still Opera fan (many years) and also linux user :(
- studentik 13y agoDensity of advanced users and developers is much higher in Linux world. It is an epic fail to skip such community! I have been using Opera 12 since release and now the dream of having my favorite browser on favorite platform is ruined! So sad! Of course I will have to switch away from Opera on dozens of other devices.
- Al-Khwarizmi 13y agoThe sad thing is that if Opera 12 is/was your favorite browser (as is mine), you will very likely hate Opera 15+, because it is the very opposite of everything that made O12 great. O12 was the most customizable browser and O15+ is just a mediocre Chrome clone. Opera is actually doing their Linux users a service (albeit not on purpose) by not letting them see the travesty of a browser that now bears their name. I wish there was no Opera 15+ for Windows, at least then I would keep the hope for more good versions, instead of knowing that the best browser has died. By the way, there is a project to create a free browser inspired in O12- - http://www.otter-browser.org/ http://www.otter-browser.org/
- stansult 13y agoJust to make sure I understood right. I read some translation of your post, and I think translation was not 100% correct, so I wanted to ask you. In your phrase “So the company began the process of forcefully moving developers who'd worked on Linux for over 15 years to platforms they felt uncomfortable and unproductive working on”, you meant that developers who wrote code for the product for Linux, were forced to start writing code for Mac/Windows? Not that they were forced to change their actual development environment OS from Linux to Windows or Mac? Thanks in advance.
- brongondwana 13y agoBut, but... stock price. http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/OPERA:NO http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/OPERA:NO
- kissakoira 13y agowhat a waste. -_-
- RikardStallmen 13y agoOpera is ded. Better set sail for other browsers guys.
- rand01 13y agoWhen Web Kit Opera was announced, I thought only the rendering + js engines will be replaced by WebKit/Chrome stuff and the UI etc. will be left intact. Oh boy, how wrong I was. :/
- 0p086 13y agoWell done, indeed. :(
- olaolaola 13y agoI got here coming from http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/01/31/1629253/former-dev-gives-gloomy-outlook-on-linux-support-for-the-opera-browser http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/01/31/1629253/former-dev-... And in there, they speak about the Otter-browser (which I already knew about), an open-source project consisting in a web browser aiming to imitate the Old Opera interface. It is till in alpha state, but already usable.