I really don't understand why people who don't know the facts of cases like this (i.e., you don't have an inside knowledge of the nitty-gritty), jump to conclusions to readily. Aren't we supposed to be a community of rational, thoughtful people that use facts and evidence to backup opinions?
Do you stop using Google products when they get sued by various government agencies for things like collecting WiFi data? Why doesn't Google get the benefit of your doubt but not other companies?
What more do I need to know? Google has a thousand times as many employees, but when's the last time they sued one of them like this?
Were I in Opera's shoes, even if the ex-employee had blabbed something important to a competitor, I would say, "fuck that jerk" and keep on trying to make something awesome. Having ideas doesn't make companies great. It's making great things. A lawsuit is a waste of time and money for everybody involved.
HA! You must be new here.
Only know this because I got into the habit of googling when I see something fishy. Usually takes 30 seconds to find out ~90% of them are flat-out false. Shame there's no downvote button.
OK. We just need to find the other 10.
Why do people get out of their way to use some marginal browser when there better both proprietary and open source options available?
Just to add to the web another slightly incompatible rendering engine? Or do they really like the gimmicky extras that Opera offers that much?
I've recently developed some (parts) of Android framework for my current employer (which is as of now unique to this OEM phones) and I am seriously looking for a job change for various reasons. Now if my new employer hires me for the same role and I am asked to do the same thing again(and I'll mention this work on my resume and interview), I'll do it. Otherwise, what am I gonna do? Make railway engines for them or rockets or weave yards of fabric?
You are right, its not very prudent to make comments on sth sub judice.
But, let's not forget what kind of a lawsuit we are talking about here. As far as I can see it's a court case where an former employer(contracted job offer, not permanent) wants the employee in question not to do the job he knows to do.
>Do you stop using Google products....
Well, honestly many people do. And if I am not again seeing demons (:P ) many people who moved to FastMail for the biggest reasons - "privacy, pure email as in firm's passion for good email service"[1] - may see sth in it and may not find suh an Opera(which owns FastMail) to be the kind of company they thought was [1]. Again this is a far fetched speculation but at least I'm giving serious thoughts to it :-) (and I do not use Opera).
There is such a rush to bless this guys post and chastise opera in these comments it is astounding. I don't understand the complete disregard for a balanced consideration of the facts.
I (and again, this is personal, lest someone drag my former companies into this) stand by my statements, as long as this lawsuit exists.
If the basic facts themselves are wrong, then of course I will back off my statement. If Opera is not suing an individual for ~$3.4MM USD for divulging trade secrets, then great.
Frankly, I'm surprised all around. Lawsuits in Norway are, by and large, less frivolous and for appreciably lower sums of money than in the US. I have no idea what they hope to gain from what is already a PR disaster, nor what court will entertain this suit.
(Annoyingly, I'd just changed over to Fastmail from Gmail. I hope Opera is in the right here otherwise I'll have to change again ...)
> Hey Chris, good to know for any consulting companies
> (like the OP's) that okcupid/IAC might want to hire!
> It's nice that you're not so concerned about trade secrets!
A more straightforward way to write your comment would be "Since you believe that the OP did not divulge trade secrets and are opposed to apparently frivolous legal action, you must not care about protecting your own trade secrets."
The problems with this position should be obvious.
At least, for the US-side lawyers (I'm presuming Mozilla's US lawyers are on this one) due to conflict-of-interest rules, they would not be able to step in to offer advice and guidance to him directly, because the representation would probably be adverse to Mozilla's interests.
The rule in most states (based on the ABA model rules) is " A concurrent conflict of interest exists if: (1) the representation of one client will be directly adverse to another client; or (2) there is a significant risk that the representation of one or more clients will be materially limited by the lawyer's responsibilities to another client , a former client or a third person or by a personal interest of the lawyer."
Even if you don't believe #1 applies, #2 definitely applies.
Norway may have different rules, but the local Mozilla lawyers are bound by their local state bars, where this rule (or some variant) would apply. I've avoided discussion of whether this conflict could be consented to by him, etc, as it varies from state state
This of course, only applies directly. They can and probably are talking with his lawyers, just not advising him directly.
Assuming he can back up his narrative with facts in court, I cannot imagine Opera has a leg to stand on. If he followed up the conversation with the CEO with a clear email, then there is documentation in place. That the CEO hasn't responded should have no bearing, as an oral agreement is considered as binding as a contract in Norway.
You might say that they are "just suing for $3.4 million" and that they might settle out of court, but I'd bet that unless Opera has a really strong in-house counsel in this area, this whole story will evaporate pretty soon. Usually things like this start out because one party is pissed-off and then once cooler heads prevail they realize it's just not worth it and move on.
Not sure what the laws are or where Opera is headquartered, though so IP laws may be vastly different.
Not that I don't despise this kind of practices...
Also the judges here have very little knowledge about IT so I agree that winning the case will be difficult for Opera. My previous company had a lawsuit against a competitor and lost largely due to the judge having no knowledge of IT.
It's been a year since the video that triggered the lawsuit was published. I doubt that someone at Opera has been pissed off for a year and done this without thinking through it at all.
With that said, I think it's a very good strategy for Trond to go public with this. He is one person and the other party is a corporation. It will be a lopsided fight in the court. Even if he would win in court, it will have cost him dearly. This is what these kinds of suit about - intimidation. But by going public, he will be able to get public support and Opera is risking eroding their brand and good will. At the end of the day, a cold calculation on Opera's part to see how much branding they are losing due to the suit will convince them to drop it.
edit: Correction by magclock. Mozilla (so far) isn't directly involved in the suit. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5629534
It's pretty typical that what happens is the corporation gives some initial advice, and tries to find you good counsel. They basically have to get out, because the corporate employment lawyer does not work for the employee, and there is usually a clear conflict of interest between representing both employee and corporation interests at the same time.
Since Mozilla was not sued here, Mozilla may pay for his defense (depending on factors), but direct intervention usually does not happen.
The rest goes to your "public opinion" element. Mozilla may publicly support him, of course, but in most cases, associating yourself with a lawsuit is often lose lose, even in cases where it appears to be defending a good guy (Imagine if today they support him, and tomorrow it turns out he was lying).
They may just be hoping their name doesn't get dragged through the mud here. I haven't seen any public release from Opera accusing Mozilla of bad behavior, but if Mozilla comes out and says something very supportive, Opera may just do that. My guess is staying out of it publicly seems the best way to accomplish that.
It'll be interesting to see how this plays out.
There was an (in parts) similar case to this one in Norway about Nettby.no, the so-called "Fredrik Kristiansen vs Dagbladet" (Google it if you're interested).
Yes, but that does not seem to be what this is about. On the surface it seems he was re-using good ideas rather than copying over actual work.
The nettby case was about outright copying source code.
although this doesn't change my stance on using opera, i hope this results in a ousting of the current ceo.
The rendering engine they're dumping in favour of WebKit is fast and slick. The number of new user visible features and the rate of releases has seemed sluggish to me for what must be 4 or 5 years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_Software
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_%28web_browser%29
edit: here is a good excerpt
"Up to this point, the Opera browser was trialware and had to be purchased after the trial period ended. But version 5.0 (released in 2000) saw the end of the trial period requirement. Instead, Opera became ad-sponsored, displaying advertisements to users without a license,[8] which was commonly criticized as a barrier to gaining market share. In newer versions, the user was allowed a choice of generic graphical banners or text-based targeted advertisements provided by Google based upon the page being viewed."
Didn't work there when Trond did so I can't speak to his moral standing, but there's been talk around the water cooler about the lawsuit.
Several people who worked with Trond in 2009-2010 (and even before 2006) are still here and the impression I'm getting is that they're annoyed with Trond for taking all the credit for the work and ignoring all the work they put into the stuff he later handed to Mozilla.
He pretends to be the lone innovator but the truth is he got plenty of help. He took a healthy paycheck from Opera and then turned around and handed the results over to Mozilla.
My 2¢: He's going to lose the lawsuit.
Opera Mobile and Desktop never mess with SSL, period.
All you need to do to avoid being sued is to not sell trade secrets to competitors.
<script type="text/javascript">
if (navigator.userAgent.indexOf('Opera') !== -1) {
alert("Hello Opera User! I encourage you to uninstall Opera and use Mozilla Firefox instead. Click OK to learn why.");
document.location = "http://trondblog.tumblr.com/post/49192504201/so-my-former-employer-opera-software-has-filed-a"
}
And really, that's all that he says in that note.
Why are they suing the guy and not Mozilla, why are there no lawsuits against other companies that provide browsers?
Feels like a FU-cause-we-can type of deal.
Probably because this isn't about features that already exist, but about features that Opera was working on and hadn't even made public yet. And this guy sold them to Mozilla or something.
Opera never had problems with other browsers copying them once the features were actually out, but in this case Opera's secret features were sold to Mozilla before Opera even had a version of their own.
This doesn't sound like a very clever thing to do. It sounds very illegal indeed.
No one would (Or "should" maybe) be so stupid as to go for that.
Intimidation lawsuits are easy to make happen as the cost of prosecution for a large company is small, where as the cost of defense for an individual is large. So all that has to happen is the big company makes legal arguments that will take the judge some time to catch on to and BLAM you've bankrupted (or worse) the defendant. Once he has no money, he's forced to settle. Intimidation lawsuit success!
There's some logic behind that. To prove claims like that, you may need the power of the court to get documents or witness statements under oath. The process is know as discovery: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_%28law%29
Unfortunately, it also means that the party being sued has to suddenly put up a bunch of cash to pay to defend the lawsuit. In situations where one side has a lot more money than the other, like when a corporation sues an individual, that can be ruinous. So it can be an effective method of bullying somebody.
In any decent legal system, you can get publicly funded lawyers if you are unable to pay for your own, and if you win, you get your costs back anyways.
http://www.newsweb.no/newsweb/search.do?messageId=326699
At the same time, they published a report on usage of their mobile browsers:
http://business.opera.com/smw/2013/03/
Record profits and revenues, and 20 million new users from February to March. Doesn't exactly look like a company in trouble to me.
But maybe you know something I don't.
Without facts? None. But if you want some speculation: Opera's interface is consistently listed as one of the preferred features for its users (if not the preferred feature). And now a guy just gives away for free what would have been their most valuable asset (assuming they were on the right, but again, apparently we don't like facts). They would be pretty incompetent at their job if they didn't sue the guy.
Also Opera needs your millions so that they can continue to support a piece of software that no one uses. (Chrome FTW!)
Whether Opera is being evil or not we don't know and can't know from one filed lawsuits, speculation, and public retort so stop jumping on the bandwagon.