a question of source

[worker201]

Recently, I downloaded and tried Opera8. It's pretty dang nifty, with a lot of interesting features, and a lot of customizable preferences. And even though it is a fork of the Mozilla project, it is not open source. In fact, they charge money (~US$30) for the software.

I also downloaded DeerPark Alpha2, the second release of what will eventually be Firefox 1.5. It is fast and all, but basically exactly the same as Firefox 1.0x.

Thus, a dilemma. Pay $30 for a really nice product with extra features that is proprietary? Or stick with the free version that is pretty darn good and open source? Cash aside, it comes down to nothing more than proprietary vs open source. Might this be a case where sticking with open source might be a bad idea?

Personally, I'm going to stick with Firefox, because a) I've already made more than $30 worth of donations to the Mozilla project, b) there is a web developer's extension that I probably couldn't live without for Firefox, and c) I'm just more comfortable with Firefox/Mozilla. But not everyone else will have such a simple and clear solution.

Comments...

[Calum]

firefox + prefbar features everything i want from opera.

no it doesn't have everything opera does, but it does have everything i would ever use in opera (and arguably the OS/browser thing in prefbar is superior to the equivalent in opera, which you have to root around in a dialog box to find)

[worker201]

But the ability to pause and resume downloads, and the downloads tab - those are pretty nice features...

[Void Main]

I usually never download via a browser. I am very command line oriented and I usually copy the link and paste it behind a "wget" command. I guess because I don't always want to download stuff to my local machine but to other machines that I am logged in to via ssh. It just makes sense for me to also do it on the local machine out of habit.

Regarding Open Source vs Closed Source, if it were GPL I would always opt for the Open Source. Firefox is mostly under the MPL though but I still would rather have the source. I also love prefbar, Adblock and ForecastFox and several other cool extensions.

[ZiaTioN]

But the ability to pause and resume downloads, and the downloads tab - those are pretty nice features...

If I am not mistaken you can do the same thing in Firefox. The download manager in firefox is pretty sweet in my book.

[Calum]

not all servers support pausing your downloads though, yes? i recall that if you pause a download in opera, then resume, a lot of the time it redoes from the start.