Jon S. von TetzchnerHave you tried the @Vivaldi?
This poll is to test engagement on #Mastodon in comparison to #Twitter. Please share.
Yes, I love it!
No, I will try it!
Poll ended at .
Matฤj Cepl ๐ช๐บ ๐จ๐ฟ ๐บ๐ฆ
@jon @Vivaldi I cannot find it my openSUSE/Tumbleweed repositories. Ah, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivaldi_(web_browser) it is not even free softwar. Right.
albi von sklรกdka ๐จ๐ฟ@mcepl don't tell me you've never used Sublime Text, any JetBrains products, Steam, any non-open audio editor, almost any IM platform or for example Total Commander and Irfan View on Windows machines (we all need to touch those from time to time unfortunatelly)
there is quite a handful of pretty good non-free apps out there as products of very reasonably working organisations, which sometimes cannot be said about so called open source shit that Google (Android, Chromium), Microsoft (VSCode, .NET) or Mozilla are doing
for me the division is between exploiting and non-exploiting software, I don't care if the software has the source code released or not if it's poisoned with ads or spyware or chains you to the whims of crazy-rich lunatics
@jon @Vivaldi
there is quite a handful of pretty good non-free apps out there as products of very reasonably working organisations, which sometimes cannot be said about so called open source shit that Google (Android, Chromium), Microsoft (VSCode, .NET) or Mozilla are doing
for me the division is between exploiting and non-exploiting software, I don't care if the software has the source code released or not if it's poisoned with ads or spyware or chains you to the whims of crazy-rich lunatics
@jon @Vivaldi
@mcepl @albi @Vivaldi, good for you.
When we started working on Opera, we did it on SunOS. Up until that time, most of my work had been on Unix systems, as well as various Sinclair, Atari and Commodore computers. It felt like a downgrade to go to Windows.
I have always supported Linux and so have my companies, Opera and Vivaldi. I am hoping for Linux to grow and that is what I want to help it do. The best I can do there is to provide a great browser and that is what we try to do.
@jon @albi @Vivaldi And yes, I admit, working first Red Hat and now for SUSE, makes me rather exceptional in that I really don't have to care about Windows (or Mac OS for that matter) at all. And yes my son runs Steam and Chrome (similarly proprietary to Vivaldi) on his computer. And yes we use office365, Jira and Confluence for our work, but I still prefer Mastodon, Matrix, IRC, mostly because they work better for me (https://xkcd.com/1782/).
I prefer solutions based on open standards. That is why I support Mastodon. It is great in other ways as well, but that is for me the starting point.
At Opera we had more people working on writing the Web standards than any other company. Given our size, that was rather remarkable.
For more than 25 years I have competed with Big Tech. First at Opera and now at Vivaldi. Big Tech has a tendency to want to lock you in. We fight that.
@jon @albi @Vivaldi I understand, but I have high doubts that you can fight it using proprietary technologies (notice the success of Opera in that fight). And yes open standards are for me more important than open source, but without open source software manufacturer could be more tempted to use proprietary technology.
@mcepl @albi @Vivaldi , now this is interesting. Please tell me about what happened at Opera...๐
Afterwards, I can tell you what really happened, but that might require a bit of space.
It is good we agree that open standards are the most important. It is quite often forgotten. I think maybe more people are realizing that over time, or maybe they are not. The browser space is very interesting in that way and that is my home base.
@mcepl well, I'm noone to talk, but in my opinion Opera was wildly successful in its kinda small but very active community
and while FF was the champion of the democratic world, the main competitor of the established IE monopoly, there could have been only so many browsers so high in the game
same as in the (Czech) election, Pavel was chosen to be the democratic champion against the established populist Babis, which doesn't make Nerudova unsuccessful (long term let's say, she will use the built PR)
btw, @jon are you in #vivaldi considering bringing up IPFS or something like this again? I remember old Opera having something like that and it was pretty fun to play with
and while FF was the champion of the democratic world, the main competitor of the established IE monopoly, there could have been only so many browsers so high in the game
same as in the (Czech) election, Pavel was chosen to be the democratic champion against the established populist Babis, which doesn't make Nerudova unsuccessful (long term let's say, she will use the built PR)
btw, @jon are you in #vivaldi considering bringing up IPFS or something like this again? I remember old Opera having something like that and it was pretty fun to play with
Hard for me to follow on this discussion as I am not that familiar with Czech politics, even though I do have some Czech heritage.
I do feel we did a lot at Opera to bring the Internet to a lot of people. In particular Opera Mini was very important.
Opera reached 350 million users shortly after I quit. Then they decided to drop Presto and that was the end of the growth.
We reached that 350 million user base by building great software.
Dropping Presto was a massive mistake. Idiots in charge. That stopped the growth of Opera at 350 million. That is what happens when you have investors that think they know better. They thought it was a waste of money to invest in this code. Instead they wanted to use Webkit and Chromium.
Opera still has about 350 million users, which I guess is more than what Mozilla has today.
Just to be clear: that mistake would not have been made with me in charge.