Opera Fires Core Developers, Petition To Open Source Presto Begins

By | February 19, 2013 | 15 Comments

Opera Fires Core Developers, Petition To Open Source Presto Begins

Veterans say that “Opera hasn’t been the same since founder Jon S von Tetzchner left”.

So I guess this is it? After almost 20 years, Opera is moving away from their in-house rendering engine. And just to confirm what was already a well-known fact, Norwegian browser maker has begun firing core employees, including veterans like Yngve Pettersen, André Shultz and Lasse Magnussen.

According to Digi.no, 90 people have already left the company with 50-70 taking severance packages in January, 2013.

However, giving some credit to Opera, the company handled transition pretty well, according to Lasse Magnussen, who have worked for Opera for 14 years and 8 months, “The process, from Opera’s side, was done, IMO, very professionally and the severance package we were offered was voluntary as well as substantial, just what [he] needed to take the plunge”.

On a different side note, people have already created a petition, asking Opera Software to open source its core engine. As of today, it has been signed by 1,659 supporters with 48,341 to go.

Guess by the time we make another browser tribute video, it will be quite different from this one:

Eh… It is what it is.

[Thanks, Blake, Tibor]

[Via: TechCrunch, Digi, Twitter]


About (Author Profile)


Vygantas is a former web designer whose projects are used by companies such as AMD, NVIDIA and departed Westood Studios. Being passionate about software, Vygantas began his journalism carrier back in 2007 when he founded FavBrowser.com. Having said that, he is also an adrenaline junkie who enjoys good books, fitness activities and Forex trading.

  • Mehran

    told ya!
    They don’t care ’bout either standards or users, this toward-webkit-moving decision was just for economical reasons and it’s obvious they won’t release Presto’s source code, because that’s what Opera does, yet I hope they do it.

    Anyway, I’m starting to think why should I use Opera at all, when FF simply does everything I need? yeah, goodbye Opera ^_^

    • P30Carl

      I guess FF is not a good choice to migrate into; Chrome is a better choice. Though — as an Opera user for years — I’ll wait to see what’s gonna happen in near future.

      • http://twitter.com/FavBrowser FavBrowser

        I’ll probably switch to Maxthon as it has a Speed Dial and RSS Reader.

        Unless Opera reboot includes these features already.

        • Mehran

          I used myIE and later Maxthon 2, because I hated IE (and its plugins were awesome) and Netscape wasn’t so compatible with the websites I used to visit those days, but now, in this era, using Maxthon (as the country of origin speaks) seems so wrong to me, a few more HTML5 points isn’t worth sacrificing stability.

        • Emanuele

          I tried it yesterday … yes it seems the nearest browser to Opera, but it too is not like Opera :( … the GUI isn’t customizable like in Opera, the “sidebar” things are not even comparable with panels in Opera (and its toggle at edge of the screen), and so on…

          Im really crying figuring how can I spend my internet life in the near future without Opera :(

      • Mehran

        I don’t switch to FF, FF has always been my browser of choice since its initial release, I just use Opera occasionally and now the fun is over.

    • http://my.opera.com/rafaelluik Rafael

      I think they’ll contribute on WebKit by transferring Presto elements to it, so in the end open sourcing Presto makes no sense specially when right now it’s still their core for products like Opera TV Store. “18″ years of development could be easily stolen.

    • jayjam

      If Opera doesn’t care about standards, why are they still pouring money into open standards work? They are still one of the most active participants.

      What’s wrong with economical reasons? A company needs to make money to survive.

      • Mehran

        In case you don’t know, Opera is one of the premieres of HTML5 (which can be translated as caring for standards) but I didn’t mean whatever you have grasped, anyway.
        One of the simplest rule of getting rich is to grow your business, and Opera couldn’t survive this survival of fittest, I think they have changed the subject.

        • jayjam

          Not sure what you’re talking about. 2012 was a record year for Opera, profit wise.

  • Guest

    AND NOTHING OF VALUE WAS LOST

  • senna_4ever

    people, wait and will see

  • nobody

    there was no place for presto in 2013. Opera fucked this years ago, around the time when firefox+firebug won over developers’ hearts. few years latter opera wanted to make money on dumbphones via opera-mini – completely neglecting desktop

    but guess what, there is no place for dumbphones(even in emerging markets) when first iphone or galaxy phone can be bought for less than 10$. who wants dumbfones? opera execs were idiots not forseeing that (it was as stupid as staying with CRT technology when transition to LCD took place. CRTs are amazing in top-top-end (LCD has no entrance there) but it is like % of a % of customers. all others went to LCDs.. or smartphones

    webkit was already there. why? because it was easy to develop webpages for webkit on mac and because iphone had webkit. at that time opera developer tools were still forcing user to reload the page to get the scope and were just shit in comparison to firebug versions released years earlier.

    there was still hope at this point. mimick webkit in each and every way, copy, steal, implement the same quirks. just make so webpages work the same way in opera and in webkit.. no. they knew better. they knew so so so much better than the market, customers, opera users and in general – everybody

    guess what? they are fucked now and they deserve it. they just became ‘yet another 2nd tier browser’. they will never appear in any comparison tests nor in press, nor during shows. just yet another OEM software provider

    • jayjam

      Aren’t feature phones still outselling smartphones?

      Won’t Opera Mini also save money and speed up slow mobile connections even on smartphones?

      Why are they fucked now? If Opera with Webkit is a 2nd tier browser, does that mean that Chrome is a 2nd tier browser since Safari used Webkit first?

  • jayjam

    > fucking ad company

    Someone said that Pablo Flouret works or worked for Google. The irony.

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