Linus Torvalds Mean Quotations

If Microsoft ever does applications for Linux it means I've won.

I don't think commercialization is the answer to anything. It's just one more facet of Linux, and not the deciding one by any means.

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.

Real quality means making sure that people are proud of the code they write, that they're involved and taking it personally.

Bill Gates really seems to be much more of a business man than a technologist, while I prefer to think of Linux in technical terms rather than as a means to money. As such, I'm not very likely to make the same kind of money that Bill made.

Other people have other goals, and sometimes the BSD style licenses are better for those goals. I personally tend to prefer the GPL, but that really doesn't mean that the GPL is any way inherently superior - it depends on what you want the license to do.

I seldom get self-righteous, and even when I am being impolite (almost always on purpose - there's an art to insulting people, too), I tend to try to not be too serious about it. And most of the time it means that I can take criticism constructively, and sometimes just change my opinion on the fly and laugh at myself over having turned on a dime.

I can mostly laugh at myself and this whole mess called "Linux developers," which means that I get along with most people and most people get along with me.