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.

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.

When you lose interest in a program, your last duty to it is to hand it off to a competent successor.

The workstation-class machines built by Sun and others opened up new worlds for hackers.

Software is largely a service industry operating under the persistent but unfounded delusion that it is a manufacturing industry

We hackers are a playful bunch; we'll hack anything, including language, if it looks like fun (thus our tropism for puns). Deep down, we like confusing people who are stuffier and less mentally agile than we are, especially when they're bosses. There's a little bit of the mad scientist in all hackers, ready to discombobulate the world and flip authority the finger - especially if we can do it with snazzy special effects.

The iPhone brand is in worse shape than I thought was even possible. And the implications of that are huge... The iPhone is in deep trouble.