The lowdown.

Microsoft agreed to pay Norway's Opera Software $12.75 million to head off a threatened lawsuit over code that made some Web pages on MSN look bad in certain versions of Opera's Web browser, CNET News.com has learned.

Opera disclosed the payment last week in a terse press release that omitted other details, including the name of the settling party and the nature of the dispute.

But a source indicated that the payment came from Microsoft in order to close the books on a clash over obscure interoperability problems. On at least three separate occasions, Opera has accused Microsoft of deliberately breaking interoperability between its MSN Web portal and various versions of the Opera browser--charges that the software giant has repeatedly denied.

Look out QGL, better fix those Opera problems... :)

More details on how they did it. promoted forum item

Microsoft should stop being so goddam mean.

I can't wait until there is a version of windows that people cant pirate easily and doesnt let you play mp3s

I think I've fixed (some, if not most) of the Opera problems thanks to Any's help in that thread :)

Who the f*** cares? Its called business.

I would say those employed at Opera would be concerned that MSN would be so blantant in their attempts to deprive Opera for Joe public I want my MSN. An no its not called business, all business are liable under the anti-competitive/anti-monopoly laws under the trade practices acts, which MSN has breached in this case.

also, $12m to microshaft is pocket change, it was probably worth $12m to tarnish operas image.

microsofts image is already so bad no one even cares about it anymore.

You'd be supprised...

Most of the general public see MS as a very very reputable company.

That is, non-computer enthusiasts.

They love windows, dont know what Linux or BSD and think that Sun is what the earth orbits around.

I was under the impression that because MSN is not a government institution it's not considered 'public' and they can do whateverthehelltheywant regarding access to their website. By this logic you should be able to sue a person who doesn't let you into their house because you're stark naked and weilding a sword.

Edit:

They love windows, dont know what Linux or BSD and think that Sun is what the earth orbits around.

No, that's just what Sun think.

last edited by Hashy at 15:03:22 25/May/04

I was under the impression that because MSN is not a government institution it's not considered 'public' and they can do whateverthehelltheywant regarding access to their website. By this logic you should be able to sue a person who doesn't let you into their house because you're stark naked and weilding a sword.

No MSN is a public company and www.msn.com is their company portal. MS paid Opera to avoid a lawsuit they paid 12million. Why? Obviously they thought they would get their arses kicked for monopolistic behavior. If QGL decided to make their website work only in IE that would be their business as they don't make or sell IE or the MS OS which it is part of, but www.msn.com is a MS involved company, therefore they would get their arse kicked.

I think I've fixed (some, if not most) of the Opera problems thanks to Any's help in that thread :)

If your interested in HTML compliance you might want the pages through http://validator.w3.org/

Although you might want to start by deciding on a DOCTYPE and encoding first

Not to mention you have lots of this :-
table width=100% cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0

all those numbers should be in "quotes"

Serves them right for visiting MSN in the first place anyway. Give them more of a reason to not visit that site.

hey trog, is the php behind these forums available to the public at all? If it is, I wouldn't mind a look at it. (it's just for my own personal intrest, it'll most likely never leave my computer or be seen by anyone other than me).

nah

its looks mostly like though

k, I was just interested how easy/hard it'd be to implement an auto thread locker that locks threads more than a couple of months old. Stop those revivals :)

You could do it with just a simple script that ran through the forum database, or even a single SQL query. (Depending on how its all stored.)

Also, why did fixing QGL to work in opera break it in Firebadger?

microsoft are a monopoly though, so they cant just say 'we're not going to allow this browser to work with our site'

well they probably could, but its easier to settle it out of court.

also, they could just say 'well we dont let other clients connect to the our messenger network'.. etc

Hi visser! ;)

That is bs. MS are free to do as they like with their own property. Opera's action of suing for anti-competitive conduct means they are acknowledging that the MSN portal is a market in itself in which MS has dominant market power. I would argue the MSN portal is part of the greater portal market of which they obviously do not dominate (eg. yahoo, google etc...)

If I'm running an MS operating system but I choose to use Opera as my web browser, then MS would be blocking me from accessing OS security patches (amongst other things).
Is there an Opera OS to which I can switch? Or is my only option to switch web browsers?
This is such competition-bashing by MS, no wonder they settled.

This one leaves a lot of people open. Basically what it's saying is if you design a website that looks okay in IE but not in Opera, Mozilla, whatever, you can be sued for their loss of income - it's BS! :(

This one leaves a lot of people open. Basically what it's saying is if you design a website that looks okay in IE but not in Opera, Mozilla, whatever, you can be sued for their loss of income - it's BS! :(

No, it's saying if you design a web browser that breaks interoperability, you can be sued for anti-competative behaviour. MS don't own the HTML format, and they have no right to break standards on it so the competition's browsers look crap. Especially over such a big thing as MSN.
MS did the same thing with Sun's Java format and got sued by Sun for that too.

I think they have the right to do whatever they want. If a web page doesn't display properly in a browser, there's nothing stopping users from downloading a new browser.