Tetchy Tells All

All joking aside, I think I've never quite been so won over by someone replying to peoples' questions. To me just sounds like a nice sincere man who loves what he does. Of course he is the guy who created the party line to begin with, but coming from him, it's delivered with a particular gravitas. It's impressive for someone in his position to actually answer as many questions as he did, and not just cherry-pick. You even start to think that he picked the complimentary ones because they genuinely please him. It's nice that he was able to get himself to answer some really silly questions.

But I wouldn't be me if I didn't strike a more dissonant note. The reason he asks for questions and then answers them in text is at least in part so that he doesn't have to answer the hardball questions. It'd be interesting to know which questions he avoided. In particular I think it's telling that there were no questions answered that were openly hostile or combative, no one being anything more than disappointed. Though disappointment isn't anything to sneeze at in this context. All in all, it was better than you'd expect, and again, people like him probably don't have to answer that many stupid questions - unless he's talking to the press, perhaps.

What I found most interesting was his reply about ad-blocking:

Marius, Norway:

First, I must say I'm honored to contact the CEO of my all time favourite browser (and I've tried A LOT, and i mean a lot, like in everything from Lynx to umh, Opera). Anyhow, I want to ask you why you don't implement an Adblock-function in Opera? [Question shortened]

Jon S. von Tetzchner:

Marius, thank you for your kind words. We have chosen not to push adblock in Opera, but there is a lot of ways you can perfom this kind of function, including use of User CSS and User JavaScript. Please note, however, that many sites are only able to provide their content for free through the use of ads. They may well not be able to do so if everybody starts using adblockers. Regards, Jon

The annoying part of me wants to say protectionism by any other name. But I've pretty well laid out my position on ad-blocking. I'm not saying make it easy, I'm just saying make it possible so that the smart people can say how good it is in yet another way. I'm just hoping that he's being politic, rather than believing that anything is served by false charity and dinosaur coddling.

Also have a look at Haavard's summary of the boss-man's points - Opera's CEO reveals what lies ahead.