Nat Friedman Quotes

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.

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.

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.

What commercialism has brought into Linux has been the incentive to make a good distribution that is easy to use and that has all the packaging issues worked out.

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

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

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

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.

People sometimes ask me if it is a sin in the Church of Emacs to use vi. Using a free version of vi is not a sin; it is a penance. So happy hacking.

So far, Indian companies have focused more on customer application. This needs to shift to packaged software for sectors such as banking and financial services.

I work on OpenBSD fulltime, as the project leader. I set some directions, increase communication between the developers, and try to be involved in nearly every aspect of the base system.

Microsoft certainly makes products for the Macintosh.

After all, C++ isn't a perfect match for Java's design aims either.

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

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

I had to actually purchase a book to learn the API and write the client. It was pretty frustrating trying to learn the API and develop a product quickly.

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.

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.

We've been using C and C++ way too much - they're nice, but they're very close to the machine and what we wanted was to empower regular users to build applications for Linux.

What's kept Java from being used as widely as possible is there hasn't been an Open Source implementation of it that's gotten really widespread use.

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

The more money Automattic makes, the more we invest into Free and Open Source software that belongs to everybody and services to make that software sing.

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

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

As of today, the Postfix mail transport agent has almost 50,000 lines of code, comments not included.