I wouldn't be so sure about that:
http://html5test.com/results/desktop.html#fsCanvas
Opera has always been outmanned and yet consistently been close to or ahead of the curve.
I would say this is more about arbitrary and unhelpful platform restrictions and Opera being characteristically pragmatic about that (lawsuits notwithstanding).
Going forward, are Microsoft and Opera now both to be contributors to the WebKit project? :)
No, not the last three or four years.
Although Opera has been doing great in minor areas due to the sheer brilliance of individual engineers, the topic of every single roadmap meeting in the Core department has been "How can we catch up to the competition? Which missing feature hurts the most right now?".
Given the resource constraints, they've done _great_. But it's not sustainable. When I left a year ago, there were about 60 developers and 30 testers working on the actual engine, supported by a pitiful array of hardware. Upper management could have played their cards differently five years ago, but now it's too late.
(I used to be core test manager of this fine organization.)