Today, in the world of operating systems for personal computers, a stable balance of forces has developed between the giants of the industry, where the lion's share is occupied by Microsoft, a rather large group of adherents is held by Apple, about 1.5% managed to take Google with its Chrome OS and about 1.5% with constellation of Linux-systems has been holding confidently for several years already (according to StatCounter). It was logical to expect that the ratio of preferred operating systems among Vivaldi browser users will be the same, but in fact it will come as a surprise to many that the share of Vivaldi users for Linux is five times higher than the share of Linux operating systems in the global market - about 7.5% of Vivaldi browser users use Linux systems. Obviously, such a result must have objective prerequisites, so we will talk about them today.
Functionality is more important
How does the owner of the computer choose programs for daily use? That's right - in terms of functionality and convenience in the first place. This is especially true of the browser, where a person spends maximum time while working on the Internet. For the vast majority of us, a day on the web begins with starting the browser and ends with closing it, and for some, the browser remains active at night, building up a multi-day history of continuous work. And here Vivaldi offers a really powerful set of features that can leave many popular browsers behind. Following a long-established tradition, developers are trying to add all popular web functions to the browser so that the user does not have to launch additional programs or install extensions.
And this approach is very popular with Linux users. It is no secret that it is in this community that people are more inclined to a thoughtful approach to the choice of programs, which is dictated by the very atmosphere of freedom of choice created over the decades in the Linux environment. Making independent comparisons of browsers, they often make a choice in favor of Vivaldi - this is for us, as developers, a lot, because in this case users make an informed choice, and do not follow fashion or advertising gimmicks. The main obstacle for Vivaldi in the Linux community is traditionally a non-free license - which, in general, is not entirely fair, but more on that below - and even if, despite this, a person makes Vivaldi the main browser, this means that the functionality and convenience turned out to be sufficient level to overcome this obstacle.
A few words about openness
Perhaps the most frequent criticism of Vivaldi from the Linux community is the lack of an open license for the browser. Yes, Vivaldi is licensed under a closed license, it's true. But it should be borne in mind that the world of software today is quite complex and it is not divided exclusively into "open" and "closed", much more often today you can find a mixed model. And this is exactly the option we chose long ago for the Opera Presto browser, and continue to use it today when creating Vivaldi. Why? The answer is simple - because it works. We have tried to take only the best of closed and open design principles in order to use them with the greatest efficiency. And I must say that there is much more openness in Vivaldi than it might seem.
To begin with, our browser is based on Chromium, a fully-fledged open source project that fully complies with the principles of the Linux community. Moreover, when we make changes to the Chromium code, we constantly publish them on the corresponding page - we respect the principles of free software and try to make a feasible contribution to its development, because this is beneficial to us too. It should be noted that this open source makes up more than 90% of all Vivaldi browser code. In addition, we use open source development tools and also contribute to their development by reporting bugs and suggesting improvements on our part. But that's not all.
Beyond license boundaries
We are a small company that employs fifty passionate people, and it would be very difficult for us to compete with giants with hundreds and thousands of employees. But we found a solution - and it also fully complies with the principles of the Linux community. We are actively working with large groups of volunteers to help us develop the browser. This and several dozen Sopranos engaged in deep testing and work with the bug tracking system, more than a hundred volunteer translators from 50 countries, providing multilingual support for the browser interface, as well as thousands of test build users who help us find the most complex bugs and constantly suggest new ones. ideas and solutions.As a result, thanks to the active support of the Vivaldi user community, we can compete with other popular browsers. And this collaboration is also the real Linux Way.
As you can see, we are mostly working on open principles. What remains closed? Only our own code to create the interface and some functions. In other words, under a closed license, we only have what makes Vivaldi individual, special. Here you can recall the popular book by Eric Raymond "Cathedral and Bazaar"published over 20 years ago. In it, he talked about two popular ways of developing free software, when the entire user community plays the main role in creating a product (the "bazaar" principle), or when a small team of talented developers (the "cathedral" principle) does most of the work. So, in our case, we preferred the "cathedral" principle - it worked well back in the days of Opera Presto, so we continue to use it today. And in order to preserve individuality, we use a closed license.
Open closed source
Which, however, is not an obstacle for our users who are familiar with programming. The point is that the lion's share of our own code is HTML / CSS / JS. It is these technologies that are used to create the browser interface. And even despite the obfuscation of the code for better performance, some craftsmen can read it and have learned to make their own changes to the browser code in order to add the functionality they need, which is not yet available in the Vivaldi browser. What do we do with these users? Nothing. Yes, they formally violate the license, but if they do not start doing business on this or do not do some bad things, we do not interfere with them in any way. And we often invite you to closer cooperation.
It may sound strange, but we are not going to pursue someone just for spying on our code. Our task, the task of our license is to protect ourselves from other market players who use every opportunity to prevent competitors from becoming visible in the market and often act in very aggressive ways . We are open to users, but we do not want to fall prey to large predators with powerful capabilities. That is why we chose a closed license - it is much more difficult to “swallow” us with it.
Natural result
Considering all of the above, we can already draw certain conclusions about why Vivaldi is so actively used in the Linux environment. Licensing restrictions practically do not interfere with Vivaldi users, neither in terms of its functionality, nor in terms of its use. We communicate openly with the community and are always happy to receive any help or advice, any new idea or constructive criticism. And we do not track users, do not collect their data, and we try to limit online services in this using the built-in ad blocker and tracking, as well as other means. We are open to the community, and the community values our openness. And we really hope that our joint development of Vivaldi will allow us to create a truly excellent browser that can become a worthy alternative to its eminent competitors.