Larry Wall Quotes

I work on OpenBSD fulltime, as the project leader. I set some directions, increase communication between the developers, and try to be involved in nearly every aspect of the base system.

Many people think that open source projects are sort of chaotic and and anarchistic. They think that developers randomly throw code at the code base and see what sticks.

But typically for a project like the Mac, the size we had was pretty good. And it has different stages. The team grows as you have to write manuals and do testing... though the Mac had no formal testing.

In true open source development, there's lots of visibility all the way through the development process.

The Mozilla project is big in terms of lines of code and complexity.

We have a rule that if you check in code, you have to maintain it. So I mostly code on the side. I don't check in code anymore.

The beauty of open-source is that you can pick up right where someone left off and start right there.

If you don't have the best product, you're not going to make it in open-source.

That is why we are working with these various groups that have volunteers. We can get a lot of these things done. Nobody has dropped out, and a lot of people would like to join. We now know what each other does.

There are two main methodologies of open source development. There's the Apache model, which is design by committee - great for things like web servers. Then you have the benevolent dictator model. That's what Ubuntu is doing, with Mark Shuttleworth.

I don't think I've ever worked on anything that wasn't way bigger than we expected. That's all the way back to working on fighting games at Paradox. Everything seems to balloon when more and more people get involved.

As you get to the end of the project you want to run all the tests cases against one version and make sure that you know that that version passed everything. And so as you get late in the project you get a little more conservative about making radical changes to the software.

The Wesnoth devs are good but not exceptionally so, and we're weighed down by a crappy implementation language (C++). Nevertheless our productivity, in terms of goals achieved per hour of work, is quite high.

We're not done yet, but two things WordPress has been able to exemplify is that open source can create great user experiences and that it's possible to have a successful commercial entity and a wider free software community living and working in harmony.

In the computer industry, you've got an interdisciplinary team of people who can come together, attack the problem, and work in a collaborative style. You knock down one problem after another, cobble things together, and then hopefully turn the crank at some point.

We have a very active testing community which people don't often think about when you have open source.

Even if bureaucratic sloth can be eliminated, it still takes time to build things.

You can’t really understand the challenges involved with any major tech project until you start trying to build it.

Making a website is similar to making a movie-hundreds of people work on it, one person makes the final decision, and they make them every minute of the day.

The leaders come up from the volunteers that do the work, and it's amazing because then they do these incredible things in their community that they never thought they had the power to make that happen.

Microsoft loves Linux.

What I would love to happen is to have people at the top of their game - straight, gay, cisgender, transgender, whatever - to volunteer with us, as long as they have something of value to offer and they see the value in our community.

During my tenure with Nintendo, we've pushed back development a number of times on key games - in the end, it's always worth it - because our focus on quality is so strong.

I'm agile.

My Dad has been on board for the entire project. He has produced Hello' and made sure that everything is just right this time.