Eric S. Raymond Quotes

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

The great advance of personal computers was not the computing power per se but the fact that it brought it right to your face, that you had control over it, that were confronted with it and could steer it.

I closely follow everything about user interface or human-computer interface: technology that makes computers closer to the way the human being actually functions.

As touch-screens have become more popular, they have retrained how we interact with images we see on many surfaces.

The main languages out of which web applications are built - whether it's Perl or Python or PHP or any of the other languages - those are all open source languages. So the infrastructure of the web is open source... the web as we know it is completely dependent on open source.

The interesting thing about Android's design is how little we modified the kernel.

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.

I got tired of people complaining that it was too hard to use UNIX because the editor was too complicated.

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've been very happy with the commercial Linux CD-ROM vendors linux Red Hat.

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

The goal, as Compaq has stated all along in its history, is to support an open industry standard.

I think Linux is a great thing, because Linux is an alternative to Windows, and because, of all the operating systems that are at all relevant today, Unix is the best of a bad lot.

OS X is sweet: it's simple and intuitive, and I think GNOME shares a lot of values with it.

In most languages, 'control' is the first synonym for the word 'manage.' Control is about spotting and correcting deviations from pre-defined standards; thus to control, one must first constrain.

Whoever invented double clicking should be shot in the head! Twice!

We cannot choose one desktop over the other - Gnome or KDE - because there's users for both code bases.

I had almost rewritten all of the display code for windows, and that was when I gave up.

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.

I had a TV set and a typewriter and that made me think a computer should be laid out like a typewriter with a video screen.

Industry leaders have the power to set standards.

A black public official must be held to the same standard [as anyone else] ... a lower standard would be patronizing, a higher standard would be racist.

To make Money therefore of equal Value, it is necessary to reduce the Metal to a certain degree of Fineness, to cut it into pieces of equal Weight, and to put a known Stamp upon it as a Mark of its being good Money, that every one may not be oblig'd upon all occasions to try or essay it. This notwithstanding must not be done by private Men, who may be suspected of Fraud, but by the Prince, who is the Father of all.

The establishment of the militia, of a mint, of standards of weights and measures, of the post office and post roads are subjects which I presume you will resume of course, and which are abundantly urged by their own importance.

No person or set of persons can properly establish a standard of expression for others.