That’s a great news! Opera Watch claims that Opera S.A. will announce alternative buisness model for Opera browser soon. And, as for me, there is only one alternative – freeware.
There are two ways for Opera. It can either became “exclusive” browser as I mentioned in some previous post, or go freeware and compete Firefox, IE and (soon) Konqueror. It seems that Opera will be free. No, not free as in Opera’s current marketing rubbish “free, but…” – a really, 100% free browser.
Is this good? It’s a motivator for Mozilla team for sure. It’s also a fall of a next myth. Once Opera is free and identifies as Opera, there wont be any more excuses for much lower market share. If they will not be able to gather more market share (remember their “awesome” 8.0 long awaited marketing campaign?) – they will have to start looking for issues inside their software, not outside.
Also, what about moving to open source? Humm? Temptating? 😉
7 replies on “Opera will be finally free?”
You are talking on the desktop right ? Opera won’t be free on cell-phones where it’s only competitor (openwave) is not free.
yup. Just desktop market.
s/moveing/moving ?
I can say one thing – great. For me it doesnt matter becouse I have bought Opera ad-free licence long time ago. I love this browser.
great -but no banner? really
By ‘really, 100% free’ you mean ‘free as in freedom’ or maybe just ‘free as in free ber’? 😉
> Also, what about moving to open source? Humm? Temptating?
Not at all.
They already make 80% money from mobile versions etc, so making it free on desktops might be a wise move. I don’t like it though, such a good software shouldn’t be given for free. Besiedes, the shareware/adware model worked for 8 years. Maybe it’s only a rumor.