Linus Torvalds Quotes

I started working on OpenBSD, and many earlier projects, because I have always felt that vendor systems were not designed for quality.

While I personally believe strongly in the philosophy and ideology of the Free Software movement, you can't win people over just on philosophy; you have to have a better product, too.

Linux evolved in a completely different way. From nearly the beginning, it was rather casually hacked on by huge numbers of volunteers coordinating only through the Internet.

When it comes to software, I much prefer free software, because I have very seldom seen a program that has worked well enough for my needs, and having sources available can be a life-saver.

The biggest challenge for open source is that as it enters the consumer market, as projects like WordPress and Firefox have done, you have to create a user experience that is on par or better than the proprietary alternatives.

The thing with Linux is that the developers themselves are actually customers too: that has always been an important part of Linux.

There is a strong movement towards increased accountability for software developers and software development organizations.

My reply is: the software has no known bugs, therefore it has not been updated.

The beauty of open-source is that you can pick up right where someone left off and start right there.

In open-source in general, the power lies in connecting the author of the software directly to users, eliminating the middleman.

The reality of most software development is that the consequences of failure are simply nonexistent.

Open source can propagate to fill all the nooks and crannies that people want it to fill.

Qmail out of the box works fine, so people will want to use it regardless of licensing restrictions, even when the software does not ship with their system software.

Yet, I am convinced that there is a need for high quality software, and the time will come when it will be recognized that it is worth investing effort in its development and in using a careful, structured approach based on safe, structured languages.

I'm not of the opinion that all software will be open source software. There is certain software that fits a niche that is only useful to a particular company or person: for example, the software immediately behind a web site's user interface. But the vast majority of software is actually pretty generic.

The challenge with Postfix, or with any piece of software, is to update software without introducing problems.

This will surprise some of your readers, but my primary interest is not with computer security. I am primarily interested in writing software that works as intended.

The strategic marketing paradigm of Open Source is a massively-parallel drunkard's walk filtered by a Darwinistic process.

Free open-source software, by its nature, is unlikely to feature secret back doors that lead directly to Langley, Va.

There are lots of Linux users who don't care how the kernel works, but only want to use it. That is a tribute to how good Linux is.

Companies have been trying to figure out what it is that makes open source work.

What I find most interesting is how people really have taken Linux and used it in ways and attributes and motivations that I never felt.

The Linux philosophy is 'Laugh in the face of danger'. Oops. Wrong One. 'Do it yourself'. Yes, that's it.

I think it's a combination of technical and social factors that leads to all the defects in deployed software.

All of our code is open source, so it can be used for other projects.