"Typically people think about things like BIND and Sendmail, which are very important; but there is a much more practical sense in which both free and open code helped spread the birth of the Internet. That's the decision made in architecting the browsers that reveals source. The source is constantly available. People didn't learn HTML just by buying Tim (O'Reilly)'s books first. What they did was steal each other's Web pages, made the tweaks they wanted, then bought Tim's books so they could figure out how to do it better the next time around." - Lawrence Lessig
I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone. - Jack Valenti, before Congress, 1983
I say to you Jack Valenti is to the American film viewer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone. - Email signature quote, 2002
The open-source community built the Web and the Internet before it had acquired a name for itself and full consciousness of its own practices. Today, the cutting-edge work in operating systems languages, desktop user interfaces, relational databases and many other areas is being done either within the open-source community or in cooperation with it by academics. These prodigious efforts of imagination dwarf any "prediction" produced by closed-source software development in the last two decades. - Eric S. Raymond
"Basically, all the commercial people have their own agenda and that's very healthy because you want to have these often-conflicting agendas to push the system into something that actually works for everybody." - Linus Torvalds
“If you know how the source code works you are much more likely to be able to sort out your problems. You will be able to link the software with the O/S better. You won't have to spend so much on maintenance, the costs will be lower. It would also cost a lot less to develop the software in-house and get it to work the way you want it to.” - CIO of a High Street retailer