Wietse Venema Quotes

I think operating systems work best if they're free and open. Particular applications are more likely to be proprietary.

There's a big tendency to gravitate toward a closed and proprietary approach too easily.

I would encourage nonproprietary standards for tools and libraries.

Of course, all of the software I write runs on Linux; that's the beauty of standards, and of cross-platform code. I don't have to run your OS, and you don't have to run mine, and we can use the same applications anyway!

I don't want to kill windowing; I want to restore choice and options.

The nicest thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from.

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.

When I helped to develop the open standards that computers use to communicate with one another across the Net, I hoped for but could not predict how it would blossom and how much human ingenuity it would unleash.

Linux people do what they do because they hate Microsoft.

I can't recall any difficulty in making the C language definition completely open - any discussion on the matter tended to mention languages whose inventors tried to keep tight control, and consequent ill fate.

Making things open-source brings the cost down.

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.

Success for open source is when the term 'open source' becomes a non-factor in the decision making process, when people hear about Linux and compare it to Windows NT, and they compare it on the feature set and don't have much of an excuse not to use it.

Proprietary software tends to have malicious features. The point is with a proprietary program, when the users don't have the source code, we can never tell. So you must consider every proprietary program as potential malware.

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

It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.

Ruby inherited the Perl philosophy of having more than one way to do the same thing. I inherited that philosophy from Larry Wall, who is my hero actually. I want to make Ruby users free. I want to give them the freedom to choose.

We fully expect our competitors to join us in embracing open standards with their next redesigns.

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.

The web's strength lies precisely in its unique position as the world's first universal platform.

Proprietary software keeps users divided and helpless. Divided because each user is forbidden to redistribute it to others, and helpless because the users can't change it since they don't have the source code. They can't study what it really does. So the proprietary program is a system of unjust power.

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

A critical factor in its success was that the X developers were willing to give the sources away for free in accordance with the hacker ethic, and able to distribute them over the Internet.

If the Net becomes the center of the universe, which is what seems to be happening, then the dizzying array of machines that will be plugged into it will virtually guarantee that the specifics of which chip and which operating system you've got will be irrelevant.

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