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Software is like sex. It's only good when it's for free.

Linus Torvalds

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Linus Torvalds
Age: 54
Born: 1969
Born: December 28
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Linus Benedict Torvalds
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More quotes by Linus Torvalds

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Every once in a while an issue comes up where I have to make a statement. I can't totally avoid all political issues, but I try my best to minimize them. When I do make a statement, I try to be fairly neutral.
Linus Torvalds
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I started Linux because I wanted to see it on the desktop... I do hope that the desktop people would try to work together ... and work more on the technology than trying to make the login screen look really nice.
Linus Torvalds
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When I do programming in my free time and for my own enjoyment, I really want to have a kind of protection: knowing that when I improve a program those improvements will continue to be available to me and others in future versions of the program.
Linus Torvalds
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Theory and practice sometimes clash. And when that happens, theory loses. Every single time.
Linus Torvalds
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On the internet nobody can hear you being subtle.
Linus Torvalds
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I don't doubt at all that virtualization is useful in some areas. What I doubt rather strongly is that it will ever have the kind of impact that the people involved in virtualization want it to have.
Linus Torvalds
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If you want to travel around the world and be invited to speak at a lot of different places, just write a Unix operating system.
Linus Torvalds
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The NIH syndrome (Not Invented Here) is a disease.
Linus Torvalds
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By staying neutral, I end up being somebody that everybody can trust. Even if they don't always agree with my decisions, they know I'm not working against them.
Linus Torvalds
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There are extremists in the free software world, but that's one major reason why I don't call what I do free software any more. I don't want to be associated with the people for whom it's about exclusion and hatred.
Linus Torvalds
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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.
Linus Torvalds
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With software, you really can replicate and do a lot of very real and active development in parallel, and actually try it out and see what works.
Linus Torvalds
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You know, the mark of intelligence is realizing when you're making the same mistake over and over and over again, and not hitting your head in the wall five hundred times before you understand that it's not a clever thing to do.
Linus Torvalds
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Shareware tends to combine the worst of commercial software with the worst of free software.
Linus Torvalds
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The cyberspace 'earnings' I get from Linux come in the format of having a Network of people that know me and trust me, and that I can depend on in return.
Linus Torvalds
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To be a nemesis, you have to actively try to destroy something, don't you? Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be a completely unintentional side effect.
Linus Torvalds
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The bulk of all patents are crap. Spending time reading them is stupid. It's up to the patent owner to do so, and to enforce them.
Linus Torvalds
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I'm simply too content doing what I want to do to really have a very negative attitude towards MicroSoft. They make bad products - so what? I don't need to care, because I happily don't have to use them, and writing my own alternative has been a very gratifying experience in many ways.
Linus Torvalds
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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.
Linus Torvalds
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There's innovation in Linux. There are some really good technical features that I'm proud of. There are capabilities in Linux that aren't in other operating systems.
Linus Torvalds