Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
Search

News for nerds, stuff that matters

Slashdot Log In

Log In

Create Account  |  Retrieve Password

Opera Offers Free Licenses For Educational Use

Posted by timothy on Wed Jan 12, 2005 09:41 AM
from the opera-licenses-are-a-dangerous-idea dept.
Education The Internet Software IT
Opera Watch writes "Opera Software today announced that it would offer free licenses to higher education institutions. This is a change from the previous cost of $1000 (US) for unlimited licenses. It remains to be seen, however, whether Opera will allow schools to give standard Opera licenses to students to use on personal computers/laptops within campus at no additional cost, that came with the $1000 license fee. This comes after a respected university advised its students not to use Internet Explorer, for its lack of security. Opera Software said they are doing so in an effort to meet the student and university need for security on the Internet."
+ -
story
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

Opera Offers Free Licenses For Educational Use 50 Comments More /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More
Loading... please wait.

  • Free as in beer (Score:3)

    by slashnutt (807047) on Wednesday January 12 2005, @09:42AM (#11334662) Journal
    Software isn't free unless you have specific rights over the source code to basically do what you want with the code.

    GNU defines [gnu.org] free software:

    The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0)

    The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this

    The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2)

    The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this

    The only sticky part is the licensing of free software - total freedom would allow me to fork the source for profit yet that would then restrict the freedom of others in using said free software thus making the software not free anymore. So to remain free I cant do certain things to software restricting my own freedom.

    As for Opera thanks but no thanks I have the desire to keep using as much really free software as possible promoting further development.

    • Ah, a prototypical /. reaction. Some company does something nice, like offers free licenses to schools, and what's the first post? Criticism for not going far enough.

      It would sure be nice if everything were free, source were available, nothing had bugs, and everyone got woken up by a blowjob, but the world just doesn't work that way.

      We should be congratulating those companies that look beyond their immediate bottom line to try and make the world a better place, even if it is a loss-leading marketing exp
    • The definition of free was used 'as in beer' well before 'as in speech'. Just because RMS uses 'free' in such a sense doesn't mean everyone must. Actually it was a mistake of RMS by using the same word (he could have used 'liberal' instead).

      As a suggestion, please don't preach such a lecture onto slashdot.
      • Why should RMS have to redefine what free means to him and what a lot of people of recognized by the meaning free? Wouldn't it make more sense for people touting that their software is free to put the actual meaning in to it by saying it may be free but you have give up your soul.
    • No one said they were making Opera "Free". It says they are offering "free" licenses to universities and such. It seems pretty obvious to me that "free" in this instance is referring to the pre-existing license that they usually charge for, that being the license to USE the software. This isn't even related to GPL as it's an end-user license to use the software. If you don't like it, by all means go ahead and don't use it. I don't think you qualify anyway since you aren't a university or higher eductio
    • Where does it mention the software being free? The article clearly states that it's license which is free and we can safely presume that in this context, (even on /.) it means free as in beer. Please drink your free coffee before posting.
    • Perhaps you should consider The GIMP vs. Photoshop. The GIMP is free and works well, but the comercial version of the software is better because they have greater funding for R&D. All the makers of the GIMP can do is try and copy and keep up. Firefox and Opera are similar. Opera creates innovations and Firefox copies them through extensions. If you want Joe Average to switch browsers AND use all these nifty new features he has never even considered from using IE, you can't expect him to go out and

    • Re:Free as in beer (Score:5, Insightful)

      by killmenow (184444) on Wednesday January 12 2005, @10:17AM (#11335077)
      Geesh, I was just going to do some moderating; but, I have to respond.

      There are several replies to this post with the "wah! typical /. wah! why are you so critical wah! they're a commercial company wah! get over yourself ... WAH! WAH! WAH!"

      Look, nowhere in this post did he bitch about Opera. He said he desires to keep using as much "really free" software as possible... and simply, "thanks but no thanks" and frankly never did he say Opera sucks or FSCK Opera! He never even suggested they should open source their product.

      Listen, I loved the Opera browser. I'm sure it's still wonderful. But it is precisely this reason that I no longer use it.

      I bought and paid for Opera. I even asked my wife for a new license for Christmas a few years back...and she got it for me. I was a huge Opera fanboy. Whenever some story about browsers came up on /. I'd be one of the first saying, "Hey, you should use Opera. It's sweet!" and such.

      But, at some point I realized that as cool as Opera is, and as much as I think the company is a fine company, it's still not software that is terribly concerned with freedom. And there are two perfectly acceptable (if not arguably better in some ways) browsers that are. Opera wants to give gratis licenses to schools, good on them. But any school that takes that gift should look at it for what it is and weigh carefully their options. Firefox is a damn fine browser on par with Opera in most ways that the majority of their users would need...and it's not just gratis, it's free. If Opera goes under, what then?

      To me, Opera and Mozilla/Firefox...it's like six of one, half-a-dozen of another. And functionality (for my concern) being equal, I choose to use Mozilla/Firefox now. Because they're free, not because they're gratis. And I want to support this.

      I find it amazing somebody points out that he makes the same choice on slashdot (of all places) and not only gets flack about it but gets modded down for it.

      Anomaly...does not compute.
      • I find it amazing somebody points out that he makes the same choice on slashdot (of all places) and not only gets flack about it but gets modded down for it.

        I think the moderation was done not because of his software preference, not because of which software development model he supported, but because of the (in my opinion as well) completely redundant rambling on about the GPL, what it implies, and how Opera shouldn't be called free software. I quote:

        Software isn't free unless you have specific rights

    • Maybe you're different from the rest of the world. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Kjella (173770) on Wednesday January 12 2005, @10:19AM (#11335103) Homepage
      As for Opera thanks but no thanks I have the desire to keep using as much really free software as possible promoting further development.

      ...but I use GNU/free software when it empowers me. Having GIMP empowers me to make a choice about buying Photoshop. But if you can't use software because it's not GNU/free, then you're not freed - you're enslaved to only use the software people are willing to give away for GNU/free.

      I'm not going to force myself to use inferior software (not claiming that this is the case here) for no reason. To me, Opera delivers a better product. So other products are OSS. But if that can't deliver, does it matter? No. If you want to preach to anyone but the fanatics, you have to show that this leads to better qualities. Faster. More stable. More secure. More standards-compliant. Great extensions. More flexible.

      If the can't argue price (or TCO), you can't argue features, if you can't argue quality, if all you have is that it is GNU/free, noone cares. RMS can preach all he wants. People don't use OSS software because it is OSS, they use it because it is better. Perhaps that's the OSS process, perhaps it's just a bunch of brillant people who could have done the same with a commercial product. But if you can't deliver, it's a dud either way.

      Kjella
    • Software isn't free unless you have specific rights over the source code to basically do what you want with the code.

      BULLSHIT!

      I love open source, use it, enjoy it, support it (take time out of busy day to report firefox bugs, and donated money) and I cheer RMS on and on....

      But your little quote is bullshit. I think what they are doing is great. Free = don't pay $ so yes, it IS free.

      If Mercedes gave you a car for free, but said "don't open the engine hood at all, otherwise drive the car as much as y

      • Re:Open beer (Score:5, Insightful)

        by WIAKywbfatw (307557) on Wednesday January 12 2005, @10:25AM (#11335189) Journal
        As a long-time Opera user, I'll just point out that half the features that people rave about in Firefox were Opera innovations.

        Like it or not, Opera is a great piece of software and it's helped to make Firefox a great piece of software. Had Opera the company been litiguous in nature, they could easily have stamped down on some of those borrowed features, but Opera is one of the good guys and, if I remember correctly, opposed to software patents, etc.

        Yet you still choose to paint a picture of Opera that's negative with your talk of whip hands, etc. Well, newsflash for you buddy: they good people at Opera still have to put food on their own tables and roofs above their heads so I and others will continue to appreciate the hard work they put into what many people regard as the best browser (with in-built mail client, RSS reader, etc) available by putting our money where our mouths are.
      • RMS isn't saying that one of the common uses of the word is "wrong", he's just saying that the meaning he's using is the other one (free as in freedom).

        Anyway, according to the dictionary that was the original meaning and the "free from payment" one came later. Obviously both are in common use.

        The problem is that we think of software as a product. Consider "free speech" vs. "free books" and you get the idea. Probably RMS should have called it "free code" instead of "free software".

  • great (Score:3, Funny)

    by jthayden (811997) on Wednesday January 12 2005, @09:43AM (#11334677)
    Great, now I won't have to pay for FireFox. Oh wait, nevermind....
  • I think it's funny that the developers are now going to beat IE with the same tactic that MS used to get market share for IE... free browser.

    Of course this one it a bit more secure. ;)
    • Opera won't get rich by giving it away for free... MS had something to gain by giving away a free browser.

      As for security, it's worth noting that many of the security risks from IE come from the features they toss in - ActiveX, specialized (read: non-compliant) JScript - that you won't find in other, more secure browsers. It's not excusable, it's just part of the game. They shouldn't have released the browser at all without more thorough testing and review.

      Like they say, you can't make a system secure unl

  • stability? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I really thought Firefox was perfect after switching from IE sometime ago around the mid-Firebird stage. Loved it and with addons such as Gmail Inbox in the taskbar and Adblock it's obviously great, but it still has some major stability issues. Regardless of OS or computer I've used it on sometimes it'll just crash for no reason (kinda like gaim) and it's simply annoying when you have 10 tabs open and have to go to each again.

    At very least it should remember the tabs you had opened (is there an extension f

    • Re:stability? (Score:2, Informative)

      by xy (49954)
      Yes, there is an extention that does this, I use it all the time. It's called SessionSaver. For some reason it's hard to track down the version that works with firefox 1.0, but I've gotten it from:
      http://www.extensionsmirror.nl/index.php?showtopic =166 [extensionsmirror.nl]
    • Keep the number of tabs down, and you should be fine. Opera's main problem is that over time it starts freezing, but then unfreezes. Close it out, and restart, and you should be fine.

      Now, as for 8.0b1, it has NASTY memory leaks, especially if you install over a 7.6 Preview. However, GMail only works with 7.6 previews and 8.0b1.
  • Why not all education? I looked on their site, but it appears that educational sites, while getting a discount, do not qualify for a free, no-adware version?

    Guess it doesn't matter much.. the sites I admin are using Firefox and will continue to do so.

  • The other reason... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Gerv (15179) <gerv@ge[ ]net ['rv.' in gap]> on Wednesday January 12 2005, @09:54AM (#11334799) Homepage

    Opera Software said they are doing so in an effort to meet the student and university need for security on the Internet.

    ...and to try and compete with Firefox, which is spreading like, er, wildfire in educational institutions, who have low IT budgets, a traditionally open-source-friendly culture, lots of fairly clueless users and a lack of desire to spend their time cleaning up spyware.

    Gerv

  • Opera missed it's chance (Score:3, Insightful)

    by winkydink (650484) * <sv.dude@gmail.com> on Wednesday January 12 2005, @09:54AM (#11334814) Homepage Journal
    as a desktop browser. It had a clear lead on Mozilla and IE for a while but it just goes to show that most people won't pay money for "great" when "good" is free.

    Now they have made some inroads in the embedded market, but it looks like the Mozilla team has their sites set on this as well. My prediction is the same will apply (why pay when you can get it for free), except the gap between Opera and Mozilla has closed significantly.

    • It had a clear lead on Mozilla and IE for a while but it just goes to show that most people won't pay money for "great" when "good" is free.

      Ummm, there has been a per-gratis edition ever since Version 5?

      Now they have made some inroads in the embedded market, but it looks like the Mozilla team has their sites [sic] set on this as well.

      I don't know if you know this, but before discovering the Symbian market (and discoverin g Google), Opera was actually making a loss. Look at it this way:- there has ne

    • It had a clear lead on Mozilla and IE for a while but it just goes to show that most people won't pay money for "great" when "good" is free.

      Better late than never, better free than expensive, I suppose.

      I think you're right, Opera blew an opportunity for market share by not doing this, and more, much earlier. Is market share a big deal to them, though?

      Opera has set their sights on making money by selling software or ad-ware. Libre software doesn't make much sense with that business model. I suppose

    • Sights, not sites. And I think Mozilla has a long way to go before it can stand up to Opera in the embedded market. Just try running both on a pentium 1 if you have one knocking around, to get an idea of how good they are for embedded performance.
  • Are this free licenses available for any higher institution in the world?

  • If they're smart, they'll allow students copies (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Maestro4k (707634) on Wednesday January 12 2005, @09:58AM (#11334870) Journal
    It's be best for Opera to allow schools to distribute it to their students. It's very possible that Universities may start forbidding IE usage, and if Opera's available to the students too, they may just get lifelong users. After all you get used to a program after 4+ years of use.

  • Now I'm not saying Firefox isn't a terrific browser (because it is), but when someone suggests a browser that isn't IE or Firefox, why is there an uproar? You may think Honda (Firefox) makes the best vehicle, but does that mean Toyota (Opera) vehicles shouldn't be on the road?

    Keeping with that analogy, the oil burning, cloud spewing, Gremlin with brakes that don't work (IE), *should* be off the road.

    • Another point - how bad would Honda start to suck if it didn't have competition from Toyota? I'll tell you - as bad as GM cars were in the early 80's.

      Competition produces innovation, lack of competition only produces stagnation. Certainly there is room for IE, Mozilla, Firefox, Opera, Konqueror, Galeon, Edgar-ware Surfer (coded in Mom's basement! for Lappy 486's), etc.

      Personally, I *love* Opera. I got hooked on it when I got sick of IE vulnerabilities, and when I switched Firefox was still a gleam in a

  • Different Holes (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Flamesplash (469287) on Wednesday January 12 2005, @10:07AM (#11334953) Homepage Journal
    So 'we' say Opera, FF etc are all secure and IE isn't. How true is this? I'm seriously asking, not trying to flame.

    It seems to me that some are defining 'secure' as 'doesn't have the same security issues as IE'. IE is the biggest browser and obviously should be the target of a hackers energy, but is there anyway of putting a finger on the exploits that will come when Opera, FF etc are big enough to warrent hacker time?

    Is there a way to evaluate this? It seems like simply something you have to wait and see. That the security is only available to the minority, by partial fact that it is the minority.
    • Well, so far I cannot remember a vuneralbility in Opera that allows attackers write access to your drive, or allow arbitrary code execution.

      The recent vunerabilities have been Java issues(really Sun's issue, and affects all browsers) and phishing issues. AFAIK fixed now.

      Also, unlike IE, Opera doesn't integrate into the file system - file:// links fail from websites.

      Furthermore, Opera doesn't run ActiveX, and javascript is very sandboxed.

      Opera also goes beyond firefox in not allowing third party extensio

  • I love Opera. (Score:3, Informative)

    by lythander (21981) on Wednesday January 12 2005, @10:11AM (#11335010)
    I like Firefox, too. Firefox is an easier transition for IE users, since the interface is very similar, and on the whole it plays nicer with sites which are very IE-specific. Opera is very standards compliant, but doesn't try as hard to play nice with those who aren't.

    Opera's multiple document interface is better, IMHO. It's also more featureful out of the box (I know firefox has a gazillion extensions available, many of them damn fine, but you have to go get them).

    Opera has also (allegedly, I don't use it this way) taken substantial time to make it customizeable and manageable in an enterprise sense. I think it would be easier to roll out Opera to 150 machines than to roll out Firefox with the same capabilities (i.e. lots of extensions) to the same machines.

    Firefox is truly FREE, Opera just doesn't have a cost for use, but for most users (the unwashed masses who care not at all about F/OSS) it doesn't matter.

    Now, if Sunbird works out...
    • Opera's wonderfully functional immediately on install. I'm a very keyboard-centric CSS designer on home dialup:
      • Just press G, and images are toggled on/off/cached for slow connections.
      • Ctrl-G, and styles are toggled on/off to see page structure on CSS layouts. (Also great for unreadable white-on-black 9px Verdana websites)
      • Ctrl-Alt-J, and IRC is there to distract me from design.
      • 1 and 2, and I can switch between tabs.

      I love this browser's functionality via keyboard alone (I don't even use mouse gesture

  • Opera vs Firefox (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ceeam (39911) on Wednesday January 12 2005, @10:12AM (#11335015)
    I used to be heavy Opera user. Now I'm exclusively FF user. Not 100% happy with both. You've heard about their selling points, here's what pisses _me_ off (BTW - I use either a dialup line or traffic limited b/b line. If you have a fat free pipe you may not care about this):

    Opera:
    1) No option to ban loading images from third party sites. (In FF it's "Load Images.. for originating sites only").
    2) No option to "Block images from this site".
    3) Some versions are more buggy than others. A bit of a checkered pattern.
    4) I miss history for forms. I like when I can type a couple of letters on Google search and search again for that stuff in FF.
    5) I dunno, v8 kinda fixes it but I can't help feeling that the rendered page feels somewhat watered down or something. Can't explain it better.

    FF:
    1) Image-less browsing is rudimentary and is a PITA. Please - can I have a button on taskbar to toggle - "show all images / show cached images / no images" like in Opera! Also - when I right click on an image to show it - feel free to show it inline. Also - don't ignore the (known) image size for image placeholders.
    2) Since 1.0pr(?) this "You need a plugin" popup bar SO pisses me off! NO! I won't fucking install Flash!!! Shove your ads....
    3) Back button is slow sometimes.
    4) Tabbed browsing / MDI does not hold a candle to Opera. I tried TabBrowser Extensions but they help only so-so. And they are buggy.
    5) It loses a cache all too often. With "modern" pages having hundreds of kb's of images it's an annoyance sometimes. Not to say that offline browsing suffers.

    Both:
    1) I _SO_ crave for an option to disable iframes "from other sites". Combined with image blocking it would've killed stupid ads dead.
    2) Option to save a web page with images and CSS to a single MIME file is a killer feature (in MSIE, gah) when you need to have something after doing your web research. A matter of convenience of course but imagine that Linux kernel would've been distributed as a set of *.c.bz2 files.

  • Has everyone here lost all perspective? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cgenman (325138) on Wednesday January 12 2005, @10:31AM (#11335276) Homepage
    Has everybody on Slashdot lost all perspective on how much of the software out there gets made? Some guy in a basement somewhere, usually Norway or Denmark, starts coding up something. Other people respond to the idea, and encourage them. They polish it and release it as shareware, which people decry as buggy junk. They then get more people, polish it up as much as they can, and the public starts to respond. They get more funding, hire more people, and repeat until you have a nice little independent company owned by a coder with an idea and lots of work ethic.

    The people work on the software full-time because they don't have to have a primary job. Working on the software is their job. And isn't that what most people want to do?

    I see a ton posts here about "F*ck them, they should have made it Open Source and looked for other ways to make money." What would be the point of that? That's saying they should have given up on the browser and done something else. They're doing something nobody thought possible: Surviving selling an independent browser in a hotly contested market. They're an independent company taking on a behemoth on their terms and shaking things up in the process. Give up on the fanboyisms and get a little perspective on what they've done.

    I hate to break your illusions, but a lot of the development effort (and all of the full-time coders) for the Mozilla / Firefox rendering effort has been funded by large non-free software corporations. GASP Oh the horrors!

    I'm not saying that free software is good or bad or dead. But I am saying that the software ecosystem is a lot more complicated than the pundits here are making it out to be. Stop taking such a simplistic view of things, it makes it harder for me to convince people that the OSS movement isn't a bunch of raving loonies. I had to live with an Access database for several months last time that happened.

    • Opera does everything i want without me having to find extensions

      Firefox doesnt

      though im probably in the small minority that doesnt even notice the add in the top right at all unless i specificaly look at it
    • Actully, what does Firefox do better than Opera? Yeah, ads or paying for software is not as nice as free, speech or beer, but what makes you think Firefox is better? As far as I can tell, all Firefox does is implement the good ideas that Opera develops. So why not reward the guys for their good work?
    • I tend to agree, I never liked the way it rendered pages. Many pages that even Konqueror get's right look horrible in Opera. Their javascript compatibilty needs work too. I used to test pages using several browsers available to me on Mac, Linux and Windows. I stopped testing against opera because it always seemed to be the odd one. So I decided if the page renders correctly in FireFox,Safari, Konqueror,Camino and IE it gets published.
    • Nonsense. Opera is far more useful than firefox. It's faster to load, much smaller binary, manages to have much more functionality in the chrome and yet still have it take up less space, and it looks a lot nicer. It feels far more responsive, thanks in no small part to the status bar at the bottom which unlike other browsers is actually very useful (shows how much you have really downloaded, in kb, along with real status). The tabs are better integrated and can be separated so you have two pages in the same
    • Well, I'll leave it to the Opera zealots to post lists of features, but i'll give only one reason.

      It has the most responsive UI I have seen in a graphical program. It's the vi of browsers; tremendously powerful, yet small and nimble. And its a class apart on under-specced machines - Firefox doesnt even compare.

      I have used the latest versions of firefox, Maxthon etc.. I'm not switching from Opera.
      • I agree, however I don't want anyone forcing me to use Opera on my own system. If I have to use Opera or IE because that's what someone has and they don't want me installing Firefox, that's what I'll use.
      • I have downloaded and tried opera off and on over the last 4 years. The version I tried about 6 weeks ago was noticeably slower than firefox and have never had any tab issues with FF. Usually I don't have more than 2 or 3 tabs going at once. Thats probably why I have never had problems with it.

        Also Opera will do some strange things with stretching graphics and page layouts, over all it does a better job of displaying a site more closely to what IE does.

        I like Fire Fox better based on it's speed and si

    • Re:hm (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Coneasfast (690509)
      They must feel the pressure of Firefox...

      They should have made the program free for everyone and look elsewhere for sources of income. Firefox is gaining market share at a steady pace and if Opera doesn't act now, they'll be out of the game.
      • Why on earth should they do that? Opera costs them money to make and distribute, and I'm sure the investors would like to see some sort of return. If they were going to get out of the browser business it seems more likely they would try to sell to Apple, MS or AOL.

    • Re:hm (Score:3, Informative)

      by anum (799950)
      A little bit desperate maybe but a good move overall. Opera is a good browser but I'm not likely to pay money for it on my desktop. On my handheld however, I would be lost without it. Opera really shines in the embedded market and I suspect they make most of their money from this, if they don't now I'm sure that is the direction they are going. I wish them luck.
      I plan to stick with firefox on my desktop for now but I bet my next phone/palm has Opera on it.

    • Re:What advantages does Opera have over Firefox? (Score:5, Informative)

      by TheRaven64 (641858) on Wednesday January 12 2005, @12:02PM (#11336573) Homepage Journal
      I haven't used FireFox much, so I don't know how many of these features it misses, but here are a few of the things I liked about Opera:
      • The ability to toggle image display with a single button.
      • The option to switch to your own/no CSS with a single button press (including some nice options, such as one that shows structural tags). Very nice with sites with ugly CSS.
      • Much better IE compatibility than any other browser I've used.
      • Mouse gestures. I know they are available as a FireFox extension, but last time I checked this didn't support my favourite one: right-drag down on a link opens the link in a new tab.
      • It's tiny. Really. Around 3MB for a full featured browser and mail client.
      • Easy to change User Agent string for those sites that work fine in Opera but redirect you to a `You need IE' page anyway.
      • Rembers open windows / tabs on exit, so you can restart browsing at exactly the same point.
      • Tabs can be re-ordered by dragging them around the tab-bar (I don't know if FireFox does this, but it's a feature I really miss in Safari).
      I'm sure there were several others.

All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2009 Geeknet, Inc.