Opera Settles $12.75m Lawsuit, But with Whom? 357
An anonymous reader writes "According to a press release from Opera Software ASA, they have settled legal claims with an
international corporation resulting in payment to Opera of net USD 12.75 million. The interesting bit is that the international corporation is unknown. Dagbladet speculates that Microsoft is paying up. They reason it has something to do with this."
Microsoft? (Score:5, Informative)
I am also suspicious of Microsoft, but I doubt it has anything to do with the MSN debacle. All they did was just send a poorly-rendered page. It's underhanded, but most websites don't comply with W3C spec anyway. I suppose it's possible that Microsoft paid Opera to make it go away, but there's little proof.
Obligatory google cache (Score:5, Informative)
Light on the content aren't we? (Score:5, Informative)
Nary a word about it.
But hey, don't let that stop you from flaming Microsoft.
Re:Microsoft? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Microsoft? (Score:3, Informative)
And in related news... (Score:5, Informative)
Full text (sorry, no pictures):
Why doesn't MSN work with Opera?
[Update Feb 7: After this page had been referenced by Cnet, The Register and Slashdot, MSN changed their setup so that Opera7 no longer receives the distorted style sheet. Opera6, however, still does]
Microsoft and MSN have a history of trying to stop people from using the Opera browser. When trying to access MSN.com using the Opera browser, there are two visible problems. First, for the user it looks like Opera has a serious flaw so that many lines are partially hidden. Second, the page shows less content than users of Microsoft's Internet Explorer (MSIE) see.
The purpose of this page is to document, in technical terms, what is going on. Did the Opera programmers make grave mistakes? Or is it something wrong on the MSN site? If so, is the Opera browser targeted specifically? (Executive summary: no, yes, yes)
To analyze the problem, the first step is to download the files as they are served to the browsers. When requesting a page, the browser sends along a "User-Agent" string which makes it possible for the server to identify which make and version the browser is. Here are the User-Agent strings used by the three browsers (when running on Windows XP) in this test:
Browser User-Agent string
Opera 7.0 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT 5.1) Opera 7.0 [en]
MSIE 6.0 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)
Netscape 7.01 Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.0.2) Gecko/20021120 Netscape/7.01
When downloading pages, browsers sometimes modify the content before saving the pages to disk. For comparison purposes it is therefore important to use another to fetch the files. In this test "wget" was used. The table below shows the files fetched by "wget" when told to identify as Opera7, MSIE and Netscape 7.01, respectively. The test was run around 2PM Oslo time on Feb 5, 2003.
Files Bytes Command used to fetch file
opera7.html 39436 wget --user-agent="Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT 5.1) Opera 7.0 [en]" --output-document opera7.html http://www.msn.com
msie6.html 37253 wget --user-agent="Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)" --output-document msie6.html http://www.msn.com
ns7.html 37379 wget --user-agent="Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.0.2) Gecko/20021120 Netscape/7.01" --output-document ns7.html http://www.msn.com
As can be seen in the table above, each browser is sent different HTML files. If you open the files in your browser of choice, you will see that that the file sent to Opera7 has less content in (although it is bigger) than the version sent to the Microsoft and Netscape browsers.
To understand why there are differences, we need to peek inside the HTML files. This part of the analysis is quite time-consuming, but by now we have some experience. It turns out that MSN sends different style sheets to the different browsers. This can be seen in the first LINK element of each of the three files. The style sheets are:
Browser File Bytesize Command used to fetch file
Opera 7.0 site.css 521 wget --user-agent="Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT 5.1) Opera 7.0 [en]" --output-document site.css http://i.msn.com/m/8/c/site.css
MSIE 6.0 site-win-ie6.css 2036 wget --user-agent="Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)" --output-document site-win-ie6.css http://i.msn.com/m/8/c/site-win-ie6.css
Netscape 7.01 site-all-nav6.css 1926 wget --user-agent="Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.0.2) Gecko/20021120 Netscape/7.01" --output-document site-all-nav6.css http://i.msn.com/m/8/c/site-all-nav6.css
As can be seen in the table above, Opera7 receives a style sheet which is very different from the Microsoft and Netscape browsers. Looking inside the style sheet sent to Opera7 we find this fragment:
Re:You'd be wrong (Score:3, Informative)
Secret User Agent Man (Score:3, Informative)
Translated Text from dagbladet.no (Score:5, Informative)
Headline: Secret Million-settlement
Picturetext: MSN: This is how the broken MSN looked like.
Ingress: An american company must pay one year of earnings(one year of opera's earning that is, the sentence was unclear in norwegian too) to Opera software. Why is a secret.
(Dagbladet.no): Opera software has just reached a settlement in a legal dispute with an american company. According to a stockmarket note issued today, the compensation given to Opera was 89 millions.
The company was not one of Operas existing customers.
- We have presented a few fact against this company. We agreed to avoid taking this court. A part of the bargain is not telling which company this is, says technical manager Håkon Wium Lie in Opera software to dagbladet.no
- Is this about the mobilephone reader or the pc-version?
- This issue is not a pirating or patent issue. In the settlement we do not give away any rights concering our products, and we shall continue making good products, says Lie.
It was after a substantial amound of documentation was sent over to the american company that the settlement came to be. As a consequence, this will not come before the court.
Last year Opera made 78 million kroners (about 10 million dollars). This settlement therefor equals one year of revenues.
- However, this year our ambitions are far greater, claims Lie.
Accusing Microsoft
Dagbladet.no doesn't know which company entered the settlement with Opera. It is however formerly known that since 2001 Microsoft have been blocking out Opera customers on purpose from their net pagers.
On his private webpages Wium Lie have in detalj explained what happens when a user enters the netpage msn.com with Opera.
He has documented that MSN sends a seperate version of their pages that looks worse on Opera and Netscape. On these pages, the page looks broken and weird. Among other things, part of the content is being placed outside the margin. MSN fixed the error after being by Opera, however older version still have trouble.
Read also: 'ditch Internet Explorer'
Quick and dirty translation of the article (Score:4, Informative)
[translation]
Secret millon-dollar settlement
An american company will pay about a years revnue to Opera Software. The reason is secret.
Opera software has recieved a sum of money after entering a settlement with an american company. According to a press release that Opera send out today, the settlement has given the company a compensation of 89 million norwiegian kroner (NOK).
The company is not one of operas existing customers.
- We have laid forth some facts against a company. We have agreed not to take this to court. It's also a part of the settlement that we
don't tell which the involved company is, says the technical director Håkon Wium Lie of Opera software to Dagbladet.no
- Is this about the cellphone browser or the
pc browser?
- It's not about piracy or patents. We don't give
up any rights in the settlement and we will
continue to deliver good products, Lie says.
It was efter sending a large amount of documents to the american company that the settlement was reached. Thereby this issue won't go to court.
Last year Opera made of profit of 78 million NOK. The settlement thereby brings in a years profit to Opera.
- Although this year we have widely larger ambitions, says Lie.
[/translation]
The rest is just about the old msn/opera issue.
Link from The Register (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Microsoft? (Score:5, Informative)
Read the article (or at least the google cached article), and you will see that Opera's research showed that MSN was feeding opera a debilitated style sheet that had list items falling off the left edge of the screen. The code in question is
The research further showed that if you fed this same sheet to MSIE, it behaved exactly the same way -- that is, it fell off the left side of the page. Further, anyone who has ever done anything with style sheets would never feed that -30px declaration and expect anything productive to be done with it. That MSN fed it to someone else's browser but not theirs is suspicious at least.
It's Norwegian, here's the article. (Score:3, Informative)
An american company has to pay the equivalent of one years profits to web-browser company Opera.
credit: JAN THORESEN@dagbladet
(Dagbladet.no): Opera Software has gained a nice chunk of cash after settling a case in american courts. According to a notice to investors the company sent out today,
the company has agreed to pay Opera 89 million kroner ($1 = ~6.8 NOK)
The company is not a customer of Opera Software.
- We have presented a list of facts about a company, and we have reached an agreement with said company to handle this out of court. It is also a part of the settlement that we do not disclose the name of this company, says technical director at Opera, Håkon Wium Lie.
- Is this settlement over the WAP browser or the regular Web browser?
- This is not a matter of piracy or patents. We do not surrender any rights with this settlement, and we will of course concentrate on continuing to produce good products, says Lie.
Last years revenue for Opera was 78 million NOK, almost the size of this settlement.
- But we have bigger ambitions for next year, says Lie.
Has previously accused Microsoft
Dagbladet.no is not aware of which company this settlement is with. However, it is known that Opera has accused Microsoft since 2001 of intentionally blocking users of opera from using their web services, including MSN.com, by sending a special broken version to users accessing their websites using Opera.
On his private webpages, Lie details what happens when MSN.com is accessed using Opera. Among other things, the CSS breaks the page, and so does weird use of HTML. When accessing the page with Opera, using a fake useragent, it looks normal. The "mistake" has been corrected after Opera pointed it out to microsoft.
Somewhat direct translation. Enjoy.
Re:Great (Score:4, Informative)
Another interesting article (Score:5, Informative)
[Digi.no is interviewing Håkon Wium Lie from Opera]
Digi.no reverses the question and asks whether Opera and Microsoft have had any contact on the coding of MSN. This ordinary question should give Lie no reason to be silent, but he refuses to answer.
He only says cryptically: "Microsoft has fixed a lot, but there are still some versions of Opera that won't work".
When digi.no asks "Can we expect that this is solved in the near future?", Lie says that he "unfortunately cannot comment on this."
Re:Great (Score:3, Informative)
Firefox is called the "lean, mean browsing machine". Opera has just called it "the fastest browser on earth", and they still rank very well there, although I haven't compared with a stop watch...
After disabling the Mail & IRC to transform it from something like the Mozilla suite to Firefox, I actually enjoy and regularly use most of its features and can't complain about bloat. It's still just a 3 MB download too, if you don't include the entire Java package.
Re:Block out MSIE (Score:2, Informative)
-Jem
Re:More information is needed... (Score:4, Informative)
Let's try to be somewhat rational here, shall we. (Score:4, Informative)
Imagine a small family with one PC. All family members can use Opera with just once license. I am sure you would rather see them paying for both mother, father, brother and sister, but they don't have to do that, because Opera has them covered.
Now enter people like you: A tiny minority. You don't realize that the way things are done now actually benefit more people than if they did it the other way around. Don't you realize that there are more people in this world than yourself?
You also don't realize that Opera for Windows, Linux and Mac are different products done by different devs. Sure, most is cross platform, but they have to do work on each platform too. So why shouldn't they charge?
You are basically complaining about something which is a non issue. What you are complaining about benefits more people than it hurts, and you are forgetting one other thing:
If you buy Opera for another platform, you pay less than half price for that additional license!
That's right. Your Windows license was $40, but your Linux license would have been just $15.
ESPN.com works fine in Opera 7 (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Great (Score:3, Informative)
Except that you don't really disable it. Opera just HIDES them. You still have access to them, all the menu and panel items are gone. That's it.
It's a cheap way to do it, Opera, and I am ashamed.
-30px and the LI Tag (Score:2, Informative)
Further, anyone who has ever done anything with style sheets would never feed that -30px declaration and expect anything productive to be done with it
Not quite true... LI tags automatically indent horribly (to my eyes), so feeding it a negative left-margin is quite sensible to shove it leftwards, so that it lines up with the normal paragraph text...
.Re:Microsoft? (Score:5, Informative)
I love Opera myself, but that little episode was pure FUD.
Now if you want some pure anti-Opera stuff, visit this link [translink.bc.ca] in Vancouver's (admittedly crappy) Translink website. If you look at it in Opera ID=Opera you get a blank page, use ID=MSIE and it works. I've emailed their admins and they refuse to fix it.
Re:Great (Score:3, Informative)
It's still the tiny browser.
To get Opera 7.50 Final w/o Java Win32, it is a 3.4MB download. You get the following:
Browser (tabbed)
E-mail client with database
IRC client
RSS feed reading (via e-mail client)
Pop-up blocking
Mouse gestures
To get Mozilla 1.6 Final Win32, it is an 11.8MB download, for the following:
Browser (semi-tabbed)
Traditional e-mail client
IRC client
Web page editor
Pop-up blocking
To get Internet Explorer 6.0 SP1 Win32, it can vary from an 11MB to a 75MB download (at it's SMALLEST, it's only ~800KB smaller than Moz), and is usually 25MB (according to MS). You get this:
Browser
Traditional e-mail client
What, you thought you'd get MSN Messenger in the deal? Sorry, that's another download.
Re:Great (Score:2, Informative)
Maybe you should give Mozilla another try then. It takes a lot to crash that. You don't have to put up with all the bloat; I compile mine without the mail client or any of the other bells and whistles that I never use and it does everything I want the way I like it.
I mainly stay away from Firefox because of minor differences in behaviour where I happen to prefer Mozilla, and with the latter stripped down it's just as quick as firefox.
Let's get a few things straight (Score:3, Informative)
1) While I'm no fan of browser-specific treatment (it's what keeps things like NS4 alive) and I'm no fan of MSN, I would hate to live in a world where I am liable if I screw up trying to support a browser. How does one determine if MSN just didn't test Opera 7 properly, or if they maliciously targeted it? Do you really want to set a precedent here?
2) I've been an Opera fan for several years and I'll admit the default interface of Opera 7 is atrocious. The first thing anyone should do is go get a custom skin you like, or use the windows_skin. Then turn off the majority of the toolbars. Once you get mouse gestures down, you don't need any toolbars at all. Normally my Opera windows consist of an address bar and 5 to 30 tabs.
3) Opera shouldn't open source their browser. Why would they? Not Everything Needs To Be Open Source (tm). Opera's foundation of qt is probably the best showcase for using open source for your closed sourced products. Asking Opera to open their source simply exemplifies the FUD that open source is viral.
Re:Microsoft? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Great (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Block out MSIE (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Great (Score:4, Informative)
It was like night and day
Of course, Opera's example is what we should have always had. It's only MSIE's dominance that led us to accept particularly bad software.
Re:Great (Score:2, Informative)
Bork! Bork! Bork! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Great (Score:2, Informative)
It was cutting off the left-most parts of the paragraphs in the white frame.
Thus you couldn't really read the articles as it was like reading a printed page with the left few words cut off. Every line required guessing which words were missing.
Cheers,
Greg
Re:Great (Score:3, Informative)
If you actually opened the link, you would clearly see that it was posted in 2003, and from the screenshots you can see they were taken on February 5th and 6th. So it is entirely possible that they (MS) fixed it in this 15 months. It's not like that they'd settle this things in few days.
Opera ROCKS!!! (Score:3, Informative)
Opera is also much safer. Who cares if it costs 40 bucks or whatever? Of all the browsers I've tried, it's the best one out there. Renders EVERY page except the ones Microsoft OBVIOUSLY screw up to make Opera appear defective. Just like they did with Windows 3.1 and DR-DOS. And probably on many other occasions that don't come to mind right now. And who wants to look at Microsoft's retarded web sites anyway?
Opera. Because friends don't let friends use crappy browsers.
Re:You'd be wrong (Score:2, Informative)
If they don't want to support Opera, then they should say, we only want our customers to use Netscape and IE, but to throw an error at you saying your browser doesn't support SSL and 128-bit encryption, is highly disingenuine.