Ken Thompson Quotes

I'm interested in Linux because of the technology, and Linux wasn't started as any kind of rebellion against the 'evil Microsoft empire.'

I don't try to be a threat to MicroSoft, mainly because I don't really see MS as competition. Especially not Windows-the goals of Linux and Windows are simply so different.

Making Linux GPL'd was definitely the best thing I ever did.

There is no system but GNU and Linux is one of it's kernels

I've never regretted not making Linux shareware: I really don't like the pay for use binary shareware programs.

Linux is only free if your time has no value.

I think that Microsoft will increasingly feel margin pressure from Linux as well as people saying: well actually the applications that really matter to me are not on my PC. And so they're going to be able to extract less of a monopoly rent, so to speak.

It is the fate of operating systems to become free.

I think Linux is a great thing, in the big picture. It's a great hacker's tool, and it has a lot of potential to become something more.

Linux is a superbly polished copy of an antique - shinier than the original, perhaps, but still defined by it.

I never imagined that the Free Software Movement would spawn a watered-down alternative, the Open Source Movement, which would become so well-known that people would ask me questions about "open source" thinking that I work under that banner.

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.

I was Computer Shopper's linux columnist for more than half a decade, from the late 90s onwards. Yes, I know about Linux. (My first review of a Linux distro in the press was published in late 1996.)

The True-GNU philosophy is more extreme than I care for, but it certainly laid a foundation for the current scene, as well as providing real software.

The GNU GPL was not designed to be "open source".

In trying to understand the Linux phenomenon, then, we have to look not at a single innovator but to a sort of bizarre Trinity : Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman, and Bill Gates. Take away any of these three and Linux would not exist.

Free software is software that respects your freedom and the social solidarity of your community. So it's free as in freedom.

The crucial legacy of the personal computer is that anyone can write code for it and give or sell that code to you - and the vendors of the PC and its operating system have no more to say about it than your phone company does about which answering machine you decide to buy.

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

When I launched the development of the GNU system, I explicitly said the purpose of developing this system is so we can use our computers and have freedom, thus if you use some other free system instead but you have freedom, then it's a success. It's not popularity for our code but it's success for our goal.

I think the wonderful thing about vi is that it has such a good market share because we gave it away.

I think Linux is a great thing, because Linux is an alternative to Windows, and because, of all the operating systems that are at all relevant today, Unix is the best of a bad lot.

Part of doing Linux was that I had to communicate a lot more instead of just being a geek in front of a computer.

In the free/libre software movement, we develop software that respects users' freedom, so we and you can escape from software that doesn't.

I don't have any authority over Linux other than this notion that I know what I'm doing.