“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.” DoneChallengesSourceProjectsAlternativesConsumersUsersUser ExperienceOpen SourceWordpress Author:Matt Mullenweg
“We weren’t trying to strike it rich with Firefox. It’s open source and it’s free. We weren’t trying to take over the world; we had kind of modest goals, and it was OK if it failed. We were a lot freer to make risky decisions. If you can afford to do things that way, it’s just so much better. You’re not thinking about venture capitalists or marketing or sales. Just product and users, all day every day.” IfsThinkingWorldWayTryingKindGoalDecisionRichProductsSourceMarketingStrikesCapitalistUsersModestVentureOpen SourceVenture Capitalists Author:Blake Ross
“One of the ways that Microsoft beat Apple way back in the day was that they were a lot more open; today, in the world I come from, the free software and open-source world, Microsoft is not generally viewed as open; they're viewed as proprietary.” WorldWayTodaySourceBeatsApplesSoftwareMicrosoftBack In The DayOpen Source Author:Jimmy Wales
“Basically, if reverse engineering is banned, then a lot of the open source community is doomed to fail.” IfsCommunityFailingSourceEngineeringReverseDoomedBannedOpen SourceReverse Engineering Author:Jon Lech Johansen
“It's amazing what you can get on open source now if you actually use the right search engines to find the material.” IfsUseMaterialsSourceEnginesOpen SourceSearch Engine Author:Gus O'Donnell, Baron O'Donnell
“What is al Qaeda? It's an open source religious political movement that works off the global supply chain.” PoliticalReligiousMovementSourceChainsAlsAl QaedaOpen SourcePolitical MovementsSupply Chain Author:Thomas Friedman
“Our goal is not to assume leadership of existing institutions, but rather to render them irrelevant. We don't want to take over the state or change its policies. We want to render its laws unenforceable. We don't want to take over corporations and make them more 'socially responsible.' We want to build a counter-economy of open-source information, neighborhood garage manufacturing, permaculture, encrypted currency and mutual banks, leaving the corporations to die on the vine along with the state. We do not hope to reform the existing order. We intend to serve as its grave-diggers.” WantStatesLawPurposeOrderDiesSocialGoalChangeEconomyInformationPolicySourceEconomicsResponsibleAimInstitutionsAssumingLeavingGravesReformCorporationsNeighborhoodMutualCurrencyIrrelevantManufacturingReformationGarageVinesRenderingPermacultureOpen SourceEconomic Reforms Author:Kevin Carson
“You can't take a dying project, sprinkle it with the magic pixie dust of "open source," and have everything magically work out.” MagicDyingSourceProjectsWork OutDustOpen SourceSprinklesPixiesPixie Dust Author:Jamie Zawinski
“There are many examples of companies and countries that have improved their competitiveness and efficiency by adopting open source strategies. The creation of skills through all levels is of fundamental importance to both companies and countries.” CountryLevelsCompanyExampleCreationSourceSkillsImportanceFundamentalsStrategyEfficiencyAdoptingCompetitivenessOpen Source Author:Mark Shuttleworth
“What I do for a living is somewhat like mercenary prostitution. I spend a lot of energy trying to find games to bring to alternate platforms, like Linux and MacOS, and in my free time, I work on various open source projects, and other freebies like that. So I guess I'm a hooker with a heart of gold, sorta.” TryingHeartGamesEnergySourceProjectsGoldVariousPlatformsProstitutionFree TimeLinuxMercenaryOpen SourceHeart Of Gold Author:Ryan C. Gordon
“The power of Open Source is the power of the people. The people rule.” PeopleSourceOpen Source Author:Philippe Kahn
“If an open source product gets good enough, we'll simply take it. So the great thing about open source is nobody owns it - a company like Oracle is free to take it for nothing, include it in our products and charge for support, and that's what we'll do. So it is not disruptive at all - you have to find places to add value. Once open source gets good enough, competing with it would be insane. We don't have to fight open source, we have to exploit open source.” IfsEnoughWould BeValuesFightingCompanySupportProductsSourceAddGreat ThingsInsaneGood EnoughCompetingExploitsDisruptiveOraclesOpen Source Author:Larry Ellison
“If you are in this business long enough, you hear about a thousand things that are going to kill you. Open source? Yeah, we are not dead yet. Cloud? That's not new; it's a new name.” IfsLongEnoughNamesSourceThousandYeahCloudsOpen Source Author:Safra A. Catz
“In true open source development, theres lots of visibility all the way through the development process.” WayProcessSourceDevelopmentVisibilityOpen Source Author:Brian Behlendorf
“EdX will be a creating a platform which will be open source, not for profit, and a portal for a website where universities will offer their courses. For example, MIT courses will be offered as MITx and Harvard courses as HarvardX.” CoursesExampleSourceOffersCreatingUniversityProfitPlatformsWebsiteHarvardPortalOpen SourceMit Author:Anant Agarwal
“Once open source gets good enough, competing with it would be insane.” EnoughWould BeSourceInsaneGood EnoughCompetingOpen Source Author:Larry Ellison
“One of the reasons I like open source is that it allows people to work on the parts they are good at, and I don't mean just on a technical level; some people are into the whole selling and support, and that's just not me.” PeopleMeanReasonWholeLevelsSupportSourceSellingOpen Source Author:Linus Torvalds
“Being open source meant that I could work on the technical side (along with lots of other people), and others who had the interest and inclination could start up companies around it.” PeopleSidesInterestCompanySourceInclinationOpen Source Author:Linus Torvalds
“While free software was meant to force developers to lose sleep over ethical dilemmas, open source software was meant to end their insomnia.” EndsForceLosesSleepSourceEthicalSoftwareInsomniaDilemmaDevelopersOpen SourceEthical DilemmasOpen Source Software Author:Evgeny Morozov
“Once a term like "open source" entered our vocabulary, one could recast the whole public policy calculus in very different terms, so that instead of discussing the public interest, we are discussing the interests of individual software developers, while claiming that this is a discussion about "innovation" and "progress," not "accountability" or "security."” DifferentWholeIndividualTermInterestProgressSecurityPolicySourceInnovationDiscussionAccountabilitySoftwareVocabularyDiscussingPublic PolicyCalculusDevelopersPublic InterestOpen Source Author:Evgeny Morozov
“We should probably figure out a new word for this. For us, "open" means transparent, as in "open source" - you're not locked in to what the original creator did. And in our case "open" also means distributed decision making.” ShouldMeanDecisionCasesFiguresSourceOriginalsCreatorDecision MakingLockedTransparentOpen SourceNew Words Author:Mitchell Baker
“Certainly there's a phenomenon around open source. You know free software will be a vibrant area. There will be a lot of neat things that get done there.” KnowsDoneSourceAreasPhenomenonSoftwareNeatOpen Source Author:Bill Gates
“Let me be clear - Microsoft has no beef with open source.” ClearSourceLet MeMicrosoftBeefOpen Source Author:Craig Mundie
“The future is a process, not a destination. Richard Stallman is a guy my age. I sympathize with Richard rather more than I sympathize with Richard's open-source ideas, but the guy's a mortal human being and so is his social movement. Open-source is a means of production.” HumansMeanIdeasAgeGuySocialProcessHuman BeingsMovementSourceProductionsMortalsDestinationSocial MovementsOpen Source Author:Bruce Sterling
“Open source is important to our orgs as a talent pool; we need better representation of women.” NeedsImportantTalentSourcePoolRepresentationOpen Source Author:Jane Silber
“You can't actually hire and fire people inside of an open source community. Which means that getting people to work together is much more along the lines of making sure that people have the tools they need both to get their work done but also to know what is being done by other people and how to take that to their employer and tell that story to their employer and to show this is why the community is good and this is why we're working on these sort of things because it helps us over here.” PeopleKnowsNeedsMeanDoneHelpingStoriesShowsTogetherCommunityLinesFireSourceToolsWorking TogetherEmployersWork DoneBeing DoneOpen Source Author:John Dickinson
“The strategic marketing paradigm of Open Source is a massively-parallel drunkard's walk filtered by a Darwinistic process.” ProcessWalksSourceMarketingParallelsStrategicParadigmDrunkardsOpen Source Author:Bruce Perens
“But the most reliable indication of the future of Open Source is its past: in just a few years, we have gone from nothing to a robust body of software that solves many different problems and is reaching the million-user count. There's no reason for us to slow down now.” YearsDifferentReasonProblemBodyPastMillionsGoneSourceSolveReachingNo ReasonSoftwareUsersSlow DownIndicationRobustOpen Source Author:Bruce Perens
“Hillary Clinton was an outstanding secretary of state. She would never intentionally put America in any kind of jeopardy. And what I also know, because I handle a lot of classified information, is that there's classified and then there's classified. There's stuff that is really top secret top secret, and there's stuff that is being presented to the president or the secretary of state that you might not want on the transom or, you know, going out over the wire, but is basically stuff that you could get in open source.” KnowsWantKindStatesMightAmericaStuffPresidentSecretInformationSourceClintonHandleGoing OutSecretaryWireOutstandingJeopardyOpen SourceTop SecretClassified Information Author:Barack Obama
“While we ended up having several core maintainers use BitKeeper - it was free to use for open source projects - it never got ubiquitous. So it helped kernel development, but there were still pain points.” StillsUsePainSourceDevelopmentProjectsCoreKernelOpen Source Author:Linus Torvalds
“Intellectual property is an important legal and cultural issue. Society as a whole has complex issues to face here: private ownership vs. open source, and so on.” ImportantWholeFacesIssuesSourceIntellectualPropertyComplexesOwnershipIntellectual PropertyOpen SourceCultural Issues Book:Leaders in Computing: Changing the Digital World Source: Leaders in Computing: Changing the Digital World
“Empowerment of individuals is a key part of what makes open source work, since in the end, innovations tend to come from small groups, not from large, structured efforts.” EndsIndividualEffortGroupsSourceKeysEmpowermentInnovationSmall GroupsOpen Source Author:Tim O'Reilly
“I think, fundamentally, open source does tend to be more stable software. It's the right way to do things.” ThinkingWayDoeSourceSoftwareStableRight WayOpen Source Author:Linus Torvalds
“I often compare open source to science. To where science took this whole notion of developing ideas in the open and improving on other peoples' ideas and making it into what science is today and the incredible advances that we have had. And I compare that to witchcraft and alchemy, where openness was something you didn't do.” IdeasWholeTodaySourceNotionIncrediblesDevelopingCompareOpennessImprovingWitchcraftAlchemyOpen Source Author:Linus Torvalds
“There were open source projects and free software before Linux was there. Linux in many ways is one of the more visible and one of the bigger technical projects in this area, and it changed how people looked at it because Linux took both the practical and ideological approach.” PeopleWayChangedSourceProjectsApproachAreasBiggerPracticalsVisibleSoftwareIdeologicalLinuxOpen Source Author:Linus Torvalds
“A lot of people who work on open-source software don't mind making money elsewhere. They aren't anticommercial.” PeopleMindSourceMaking MoneySoftwareElsewhereOpen SourceOpen Source Software Author:Jimmy Wales
“I would never jeopardize classified information to be brought out to the public. This information is all open source. There is no reason to worry about classification. It is simply an attempt by bureaucrats to cover their rear ends.” EndsReasonWorryInformationSourceNo ReasonBureaucratsClassificationOpen SourceJeopardizeClassified Information Author:Curt Weldon
“Huge open source organizations like Red Hat and Mozilla manage the collaboration of hundreds of people who don't know one another and have spent no time hanging around the water cooler.” PeopleKnowsWaterHugeSourceRedOrganizationManageHatsCollaborationHanging AroundOpen SourceMozillaRed Hat Author:Margaret Heffernan
“Free open-source software, by its nature, is unlikely to feature secret back doors that lead directly to Langley, Va.” SecretDoorsSourceFeaturesSoftwareUnlikelyBack DoorsOpen SourceOpen Source Software Author:Evgeny Morozov