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.
Linus TorvaldsI see myself as a technical person who chose a great project and a great way of doing that project.
Linus TorvaldsModern PCs are horrible. ACPI is a complete design disaster in every way. But we're kind of stuck with it. If any Intel people are listening to this and you had anything to do with ACPI, shoot yourself now, before you reproduce.
Linus TorvaldsSee, you not only have to be a good coder to create a system like Linux, you have to be a sneaky bastard too.
Linus TorvaldsBackups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it.
Linus TorvaldsI have one very basic rule when it comes to "good ideas". A good idea is not an idea that solves a problem cleanly. A good idea is an idea that solves several things at the same time. The mark of good coding is not that the program does what you want, it's that it also does something that you didn't start out wanting.
Linus Torvalds