"I'd be astonished if the open-source community has in total done as many man-years of computer security code reviews as we have done in the last two months." Steven B. Lipner, Microsoft's director of security assurance.
"The only hacktivist that American TV consumers know is the domesticated, mediatized, corporate sell-out, G-rated version of a hacktivist. And that would be -- Steven the Dell Dude. 'Dude, you're getting a Dell.' This guy has become the public face of the computer consumer. Steven has got the facade of being a knowledgeable computer user... but he certainly never says anything challenging or complicated. For instance, he never tells you how to get the lingering venereal curse of a Microsoft Outlook virus out of your Dell." - Bruce Sterling
"I would point out that linked lists, mark-and-copy garbage collection, and the Tab key are all patented too. Somebody who always carefully checked first for software patents would never write anything at all." - Martin Pool, in the rsync FAQ
"The public interest in public-domain intellectual property freezes dead with the humble birth of a cartoon mouse on a tabletop in Kansas City. The Mouse is flash-frozen in legal ice. He's unrotting. He's undying. He's cryogenically preserved.... In ancient Rome, folks thought it was pretty decadent when the Emperor Caligula made his horse into a Senator. But in the modern US Senate, there's a Senator who's a cartoon mouse!" - Bruce Sterling
"Don't be fooled. The BPDG standard is not about stopping 'piracy.' It's about Hollywood regaining some measure of control over what you can and can't do with television. It's about cramming the VCR genie back in the bottle, and giving Hollywood the power to bring new technologies to heel before they can deliver new capabilities to consumers." Fred von Lohmann
"If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen." Samuel Adams
"If I let people lightly connect us, where I know there is no connection, I might as well get out of government." - FCC Chairman Michael Powell
"We're moving towards a 'Creole' of technological concepts. The idea comes from language theory, specifically Steven Pinker's work where adults come together in an area with lots of different languages and end up coming up with a broken, lumpy language that is put together as a pidgin language. When the next generation comes along, however, it becomes more sophisticated and develops into a real language, then called a Creole. You only have to watch kids today using technology to realise the similarities, and that we adults are very much the pidgins." - Douglas Adams
"It isn't about open source, it's about open minds. Drawing lines alienates people to you. Attacking Microsoft verbally causes Windows users to tune out. You can't undermine by trying to dictate the terms, you have to do it by invading at night, slipping in the back door unnoticed. Then when the old folks wake up, it's too damned late." - Dave Winer
"The measure of a man's real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out." - Thomas B. Macaulay