Linus Torvalds Quotes

I started working on OpenBSD, and many earlier projects, because I have always felt that vendor systems were not designed for quality.

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

While I personally believe strongly in the philosophy and ideology of the Free Software movement, you can't win people over just on philosophy; you have to have a better product, too.

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

I think operating systems work best if they're free and open. Particular applications are more likely to be proprietary.

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.

The idea of free software is that users of computing deserve freedom. They deserve in particular to have control over their computing. And proprietary software does not allow users to have control of their computing.

I've always felt that sort of in the abstract, open-source is the right thing to do for a lot of the kinds of things that we do. There are a variety of issues that make it a very complex discussion as to whether it actually works as a business.

Paying isn’t wrong, and being paid isn’t wrong. Trampling other people’s freedom and community is wrong, so the free software movement aims to put an end to it, at least in the area of software.

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.

I changed the Linux copyright license to be the GPL some time in the first half of 1992. Mostly because I had hated the lack of a cheaply and easily available UNIX when I had looked for one a year before.

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.

Linux is only free if your time has no value.

I got bitten by the free software bug in February of 1998 around the time of the Mozilla announcement.

People sometimes ask me if it is a sin in the Church of Emacs to use vi. Using a free version of vi is not a sin; it is a penance. So happy hacking.

I'm not of the opinion that all software will be open source software. There is certain software that fits a niche that is only useful to a particular company or person: for example, the software immediately behind a web site's user interface. But the vast majority of software is actually pretty generic.

If you use a proprietary program or somebody else's web server, you're defenceless. You're putty in the hands of whoever developed that software.

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

I think, fundamentally, open source does tend to be more stable software. It's the right way to do things.

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

When I first got into technology I didn't really understand what open source was. Once I started writing software, I realized how important this would be.

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.

It is the fate of operating systems to become free.

Many users of the GNU/Linux system will not have heard the ideas of free software. They will not be aware that we have ideas, that a system exists because of ethical ideals, which were omitted from ideas associated with the term 'open source.'

In addition to making Android available for free, Google also lets phone makers change the code and customize it so that an Android phone made by, say, Samsung has a different user interface than an Android phone from Motorola.