I can understand Opera not wanting to maintain their own rendering engine, except that I though that was their main source of income. What I can't understand is why they release the WebKit/Blink based Opera when they did.
They shipped a version of "Opera" without the stuff that people loved and bet that it was the brand that people loved. I used very few of the features in Opera 12, but I switched to Firefox when the new version shipped because they made it harder to get the privacy settings I want and I can't make DuckDuckGo the default search engine (honestly: Is that really so hard to do?)
Dragonfly, the Opera web developer tool is another thing I would have loved to be able to use, but I will accept that it's a bit harder to port and wouldn't be a day one feature.
What they done in the past 12 version is beyond me, I don't see that adding anything important or bringing back anything that people actually want.
You claim they shipped a version without the stuff people loved, but Speed Dial was one of the most popular features in the old Opera. Speed Dial is one of the features that define Opera.
Dragonfly is open-source. But I guess it would be a complete rewrite anyways, so no one bothers although it was quite better (despite some major flaws) than what chrome or firefox bundle by default.
