In science, the whole system builds on people looking at other people's results and building on top of them. In witchcraft, somebody had a small secret and guarded it - but never allowed others to really understand it and build on it. Traditional software is like witchcraft. In history, witchcraft just died out. The same will happen in software. When problems get serious enough, you can't have one person or one company guarding their secrets. You have to have everybody share in the knowledge.

When I do programming in my free time and for my own enjoyment, I really want to have a kind of protection: knowing that when I improve a program those improvements will continue to be available to me and others in future versions of the program.

Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships.

Intelligence is the ability to avoid doing work, yet getting the work done.

I've never regretted not making Linux shareware: I really don't like the "pay for use" binary shareware programs.

Being open source meant that I could work on the technical side (along with lots of other people), and others who had the interest and inclination could start up companies around it.

I'd much rather have 15 people arguing about something than 15 people splitting into two camps, each side convinced it's right and not talking to the other.