I may make jokes about Microsoft at times, but at the same time, I think the Microsoft hatred is a disease.
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 TorvaldsIn open source, we feel strongly that to really do something well, you have to get a lot of people involved.
Linus TorvaldsI never try to make any far-reaching predictions, so much can happen that it simply only makes you look stupid a few years later.
Linus TorvaldsIn 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 TorvaldsSecurity people are often the black-and-white kind of people that I can't stand. I think the OpenBSD crowd is a bunch of masturbating monkeys, in that they make such a big deal about concentrating on security to the point where they pretty much admit that nothing else matters to them.
Linus Torvalds