We are clearly trying to re-define what a browser is. Mohd: Besides Vivaldi what else do you do? Are there other products? We are working on Sync currently and are testing it internally and the plan is to release it very soon. We have put in a lot of effort on the visual side of the browser and give attention to detail. Jon: Thank you and I am happy that Vivaldi impresses you. But still, it misses a lot of advanced features such as Sync that we have in almost all modern web browsers. Actually, Vivaldi is one of the most beautiful browsers. Mohd: At the moment I can see there are a lot of visual changes in the browser. Right now, we are not looking at creating any Vivaldi forks. Specifically, we aim to make it easier for people to modify the web based user interface by making as much of its source code available as possible. People are already modifying parts of it. However, most of Vivaldi´s source code is open and available. Jon: Vivaldi is not open source in the legal sense of the term and is not licensed under any of the open source licenses like GPL or MIT. So under what license is it? Are we supposed to get any Vivaldi fork now? Mohd: I read a thread here where people requested to open source Vivaldi and after that, you made it open source. We have to win people by the quality of our software and the features we offer. Google has the power to push Chrome everywhere. You can get Edge, Safari or Firefox with your operating system. We don’t have the distribution means of the others. We provide a lot of options so Vivaldi can adapt to their way of working. Our approach is to give users what they want. Features are often removed if a small percentage use it-but that can still affect millions of people. Vendors want the browser itself to disappear so you’re just left with the content. The others are moving in the same direction and limiting functionality. Jon: We’re offering something quite different. Mohd: How are you going to compete with giants in the industry such as Google Chrome, Firefox, and Chromium? What are your plans? We felt the need to provide for those users and all those that want a user centric browser, so we started working on Vivaldi. This left a lot of users unhappy, users that had supported us for years. Instead of building feature rich products based on user feedback, Opera started building limited products. Not only as a company but also on the product side. Opera changed direction after I left the company. Sadly, I was wrong and the company is now sold or at least the browser part to a Chinese conglomerate. After 7 years of fighting, I was exhausted and decided to give others the chance to run the company, hoping it would allow the company to continue growing. ![]() I had my disagreements as I have always believed that the right thing is to focus on building great products and a great company. Some of them did not believe in the company and to set up the company for sale was always on their mind. Jon: We had faced a difficult situation for about 7 years with the investors at Opera. Mohd: Why did you leave Opera and build another web browser, Vivaldi? ![]() I had no plans to do another browser, but two years after leaving Opera I realized the world needed a different browser and Vivaldi was born. After steering Opera for 15 years as its CEO, I moved on. Before starting up Opera with my co-founder Geir Ivarsoy, I worked at Telenor Research. ![]() I did my masters at Telenor Research and that is where Opera was born. My primary focus was user interfaces and usability. I studied computer science at the University of Oslo.
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