• You have alternatives were they to ever turn evil, so you're not supporting a monopoly
• It uses standard network protocols and toolkits/APIs
• It adheres closely to web standards (W3C recommendations and RFCs), any divergence thereof is regarded as a bug
• It does not try to hide its configuration or storage in obfuscated file formats, so I can choose to use any other browser tomorrow and export all my bookmarks and such easily
• It is cross-platform
• It is reasonably well performing
• It is well supported through newsgroups and a bug tracker
• Upgrade and student prices are reasonable

I mean, doesn't Opera satisfy everything that a proprietary software company should do (Quality, Price, Support, interoperability/no lock-in)? What more could they possibly offer besides open sourcing it?

Score:2