Brian Behlendorf Quotes

Like all software, Qmail can survive only when it keeps up with changing requirements.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

All software sucks.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Most software today is very much like an Egyptian pyramid with millions of bricks piled on top of each other, with no structural integrity, but just done by brute force and thousands of slaves.

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.

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.

Software is like gardening - one day I'll go behind the shed and clean up. But if nobody ever goes there, does it matter a lot?

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.

Systems program building is an entropy-decreasing process, hence inherently metastable. Program maintenance is an entropy-increasing process, and even its most skillful execution only delays the subsidence of the system into unfixable obsolescence.

Computer Science is the only discipline in which we view adding a new wing to a building as being maintenance.

You have to care about the transactional cost. You have to care about the future value. You have to care about maintaining value in your home through repair and maintenance.