You cannot motivate the best people with money. Money is just a way to keep score. The best people in any field are motivated by passion.

A critical factor in its success was that the X developers were willing to give the sources away for free in accordance with the hacker ethic, and able to distribute them over the Internet.

Good programmers know what to write. Great ones know what to rewrite (and reuse)

Prototype, then polish. Get it working before you optimize it

I believe, but cannot prove, that global “AIDS” is a whole cluster of unrelated diseases all of which have been swept under a single rug for essentially political reasons, and that the identification of HIV as the sole pathogen is likely to go down as one of the most colossal blunders in the history of medicine.

If you treat your beta-testers as if they're your most valuable resource, they will respond by becoming your most valuable resource.

Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow (e.g., given a large enough beta-tester and co-developer base, almost every problem will be characterized quickly and the fix obvious to someone).