Originally, I was in both software and in online computing. The first innovation really was sort of at that time that we're marrying the telephone and the computer so that people wouldn't have to drive to the computer center. We didn't have $1,000 computers.
Bill Gates is a very rich man today... and do you want to know why? The answer is one word: versions.
Fighting patents one by one will never eliminate the danger of software patents, any more than swatting mosquitoes will eliminate malaria.
The iPhone was the first phone that brought what we used to think of as 'desktop quality' software to a handheld platform: software where you just say, 'Wow, that's a great user experience,' not merely, 'Wow, that's a great user experience for a handheld.'
Software patents are dangerous to software developers because they impose monopolies on software ideas.
Although the most advanced software innovation may take place in big cities with research universities, there is a lot of work concerning the application of software to business processes and the administration and maintenance of software systems that can be done remotely.
Software is the magic thing whose importance only goes up over time.
Creating a piece of software is always complicated because you're doing something new. If you just wanted something that had been done before you'd just use that old piece of software. So there are no repetitive tasks.
We need to get smarter about hardware and software innovation in order to get the most value from the emerging Internet of Things.
I believe OS/2 is destined to be the most important operating system, and possibly program, of all time. As the successor to DOS, which has over 10,000,000 systems in use, it creates incredible opportunities for everyone involved with PCs.
I obviously think that freely available software can not only keep up with the evolution of commercial software, but often exceed what you can do commercially.
I think a lot of great software has been written by people who are scratching a short-term itch, something which has been niggling them for ages, but in the back of their mind they’ve got a wonderful long-term plan.
I think software patents are a bad idea. Many patents are given for trivial inventions.
I actually think the one who is underestimated in terms of impact he's had on society is Bill Gates. The reason is that with the innovation of software, he really allowed the computer revolution to take hold.
Java and C++ make you think that the new ideas are like the old ones. Java is the most distressing thing to hit computing since MS-DOS.
[We in Microsoft] are not the only software company but we are a great software company doing some unique work.
While I personally believe strongly in the philosophy and ideology of the Free Software movement, you can't win people over just on philosophy; you have to have a better product, too.
If an innovative piece of software comes along, Microsoft copies it and makes it part of Windows. This is not innovation; this is the end of innovation.
I think that freely available software can not only keep up with the evolution of commercial software, but often exceed what you can do commercially.
Patents should be for technological innovations. So a program for a new machine tool should be patentable but a non-technological innovation, such as grammar-checking software for a word-processor, should not be.
Open source is an intellectual-property destroyer, I can't imagine something that could be worse than this for the software business and the intellectual-property business.
The way to be successful in the software world is to come up with breakthrough software, and so whether it's Microsoft Office or Windows, its pushing that forward. New ideas, surprising the marketplace, so good engineering and good business are one in the same.
Companies in every industry need to assume that a software revolution is coming.
Workday is constantly looking into the future and, you know, building applications that stay modern and relevant.
We can't ever forget that the Internet now is just a staid utility. The exciting platforms are software applications that are very, very simple.
