Wietse Venema Quotes

Software as an asset isn't stable over time; it needs to be maintained.

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

Apple's advantage is that it designs and builds software together, so if the software isn't excellent, it does the superlative hardware a disservice.

For us, the real goal is to make it so that the software ecosystem is as healthy as possible.

Agitator and the Agitar Management Dashboard lower the barriers to accountability in software development and increase the value of developer testing.

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.

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.

If you use a proprietary program or somebody else's web server, you're defenceless. You're putty in the hands of whoever developed that software.

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

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.

In the practical world of computing, it is rather uncommon that a program, once it performs correctly and satisfactorily, remains unchanged forever.

All programming is maintenance programming, because you are rarely writing original code.

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.

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 problem is, we're moving to software-as-service, which can be yanked or transformed at any moment. The ability of your PC to run independent code is an important safety valve.

There's an old maxim that says, 'Things that work persist,' which is why there's still Cobol floating around.

Most of the effort in the software business goes into the maintenance of code that already exists.

We're not going to make Evolution or any of our other products depend on Mono anytime in the near future.

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.

I think, fundamentally, open source does tend to be more stable software. It's the right way to do things.

When I write software, I know that it will fail, either due to my own mistake, or due to some other cause.

Limit use of shareware and public domain software to systems without fixed disks. If you do use them on fixed disks, allocate separate subdirectories... Public domain or shareware software should never be placed in the root directory.

All software sucks.

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.