Tim O'Reilly Quotes

I don't try to be a threat to MicroSoft, mainly because I don't really see MS as competition. Especially not Windows-the goals of Linux and Windows are simply so different.

Microsoft loves Linux.

One of the ways that Microsoft beat Apple way back in the day was that they were a lot more open; today, in the world I come from, the free software and open-source world, Microsoft is not generally viewed as open; they're viewed as proprietary.

Ubuntu is doing amazing things, and I think it's going to change the face of the desktop.

I think the wonderful thing about vi is that it has such a good market share because we gave it away.

You've got to remember there's intense competition between Microsoft and Amazon.

SAP is a great company, but they have their work cut out for them if they want to compete in databases.

GNU, which stands for Gnu's Not Unix, is the name for the complete Unix-compatible software system which I am writing so that I can give it away free to everyone who can use it.

I started Linux as a desktop operating system. And it's the only area where Linux hasn't completely taken over. That just annoys the hell out of me.

I'm interested in Linux because of the technology, and Linux wasn't started as any kind of rebellion against the 'evil Microsoft empire.'

Microsoft has had two goals in the last 10 years. One was to copy the Mac, and the other was to copy Lotus' success in the spreadsheet - basically, the applications business. And over the course of the last 10 years, Microsoft accomplished both of those goals. And now they are completely lost.

Proprietary software grew up, starting really in the 1980s, as an alternative and that became the dominant model with the rise of companies like Microsoft and Oracle and the like.

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

It doesn't cost anything to replicate code. So the companies that make code, that's why they've done so well. We take it for granted now, but why is it that code is free? It's because somebody built this self-replicating process.

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.

If you are in this business long enough, you hear about a thousand things that are going to kill you. Open source? Yeah, we are not dead yet. Cloud? That's not new; it's a new name.

In essence, Chrome OS is the GNU/Linux operating system. However, it is delivered without the usual applications, and rigged up to impede and discourage installing applications.

Making Linux GPL'd was definitely the best thing I ever did.

If Microsoft ever does applications for Linux it means I've won.

I don't really think anything Microsoft does puts pressure on Apple.

I think Linux is a great thing, in the big picture. It's a great hacker's tool, and it has a lot of potential to become something more.

Like many businessmen of genius he learned that free competition was wasteful, monopoly efficient. And so he simply set about achieving that efficient monopoly.

We’re far behind [Microsoft]. They are 3 time bigger than we are. They have a monopoly and we don’t—darnit!

The potential financial reward for building the 'next Windows' is so great that there will never be a shortage of new technologies seeking to challenge it.

We got bigger, much scarier competitors. We ended up with Microsoft, a company with all the money in the world, the way I look at those guys. And IBM, another company that, historically, dwarfed us.