[smoyer]

Their lawsuit claims that "Opera Software ASA is an innovative company which has developed software and technology which have proved to be successful internationally".

The article talks about features which aren't really IP. Perhaps their trade-secrets relate to coding and construction methods that make their product superior, but these really can't be protected unless they're so esoteric that no one would logically come up with them independently.

So they sue a non-profit to stifle competition in their industry ... show me more innovation (and market-share) than Mozilla and then maybe I'll believe you're the innovator.

[Shorel]

Trond Werner Hansen is not a non-profit. In fact, he's not even a corporation.

As a side note, 80% of features in Mozilla were first done in Opera. I even remember a Firebird (as it was called back in the day, before version 1.0) fan or zealot badmouthing Opera and its tabs as being a ridiculous and unnecessary feature. After just four months, that feature was copied. It seems that crowd has not changed even a little.

The only good thing in Mozilla is the OSS license. The only reason they have market share is the OSS license.

[icebraining]

I don't think the event you describe was possible, because Mozilla had tabs before Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox even existed. In any case, Opera copied the tabs from other browsers too, so I'm not sure what's your point with that story.

By the way, it wasn't just about the OSS license. Back in the day Opera had a big honking ad right in the main window. They only released an ad-free version in 2005, when Firefox already had 16 times the share of Opera.

[yareally]

I think he perhaps means tabs with a true document interface[1] (i.e multiple web pages can be opened within the same application window and be resized, moved, tiled, and cascaded like normal application windows in the operating system).

Edit: Seems Opera added tabs slightly before Mozilla after looking it up out of interest[2]. Also just some random history on tab integration in web browsers. Mozilla 0.9.5 added them a few months after Opera 4 in 2001, though of course neither was the first. I guess one can say Opera was the first browser to add them that is still a fairly popular browser in present day.

Four years later, in 1994, BookLink Technologies featured tabbed windows in its InternetWorks browser. That same year, a text editor called UltraEdit also appeared with a modern multi-row tabbed interface. The tabbed interface approach was then followed by the Internet Explorer shell NetCaptor in 1997. These were followed by a number of others like IBrowse in 1999, and Opera in [June] 2000 (with the release of version 4 - although a MDI interface was supported before then), MultiViews October 2000, which changed its name into MultiZilla on 1 April 2001 (an extension for the Mozilla Application Suite[7]), Galeon in early 2001, Mozilla 0.9.5 in October 2001, Phoenix 0.1 (now Mozilla Firefox) in October 2002, Konqueror 3.1 in January 2003, and Safari in 2003. With the release of Internet Explorer 7 in 2006, all major web browsers featured a tabbed interface.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_of_the_Opera_web_brows...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabbed_browsing#History

[icebraining]

I don't think so, Mozilla browsers never had MDI[1], so they couldn't have copied it from Opera.

[1]: There's a feature request since 2000, but it was never implemented: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=60775

[yareally]

Oh, I wasn't talking about Mozilla (the precursor) in regards to that, just Firefox after ditching the Netscape legacy. Sorry for the ambiguity.

[Shorel]

I have tried to find said discussion in vain. It's more about the attitude of Firefox users against Opera than anything else.

That big ad is a sad bit of Internet history. A wasted opportunity.

Also: they had a deal with Google to make it the default search engine before Firefox had one.

[gcp]

It's more about the attitude of Firefox users against Opera than anything else...they had a deal with Google to make it the default search engine before Firefox had one.

"Selling out": Opera had it first!

[gcp]

I think 90+% of the Firefox users don't even know what open source is.

[yareally]

> ... show me more innovation (and market-share) than Mozilla and then maybe I'll believe you're the innovator.

I was surprised, but Wikipedia has a nice article in reference to Opera's features[1]. It even lists most of the dates the features were added/created. Opera also has a fairly large mobile market share[2], which is where Opera has traditionally pushed their browser more so than the desktop since the mid 2000s.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_of_the_Opera_web_brows...

[2] http://9to5mac.com/2013/04/03/safaris-mobile-browser-market-...

[magclock]

They did not sue a non-profit. RTFA.

[DannyBee]

Not to mention, Mozilla corporation is not a non-profit :)

[jfoster]

Technically true, but they are 100% owned by a non-profit. (Mozilla Foundation owns Mozilla Corporation)

[fosap]

Consider even the NFL is non profit, non profit hardly means anything.

[mpyne]

The NFL leaque headquarters organization is a non-profit.

The actual teams, on the other hand, are all profit-seeking entities and pay taxes accordingly.

[DannyBee]

False: The green bay packers are also a non-profit.

The whole thing is a fairly weird set up designed to avoid antitrust scrutiny and taxes.

The NFL org just plows any profits back into the teams.

[homosaur]

I feel what you're saying on this since the pro leagues being nonprofits seems silly on the surface but you could say that about any trade organization really. The US has a real problem with what's allowed to define itself as non-profit (scam religions like crack churches and Scientology, fake athlete charities, etc) but I don't think Mozilla falls in that camp.

[DannyBee]

This is mostly true, and note that the NFL is not a 501(c)(3), they are a 501(c)(6) which is a very different kind of non-profit.