Software patents, in particular, are very ripe for abuse. The whole system encourages big corporations getting thousands and thousands of patents. Individuals almost never get them.
Linus TorvaldsRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Open source development is compared to scientific progress, emphasizing collaboration and transparency.
In this quote, Linus Torvalds draws a parallel between open source software development and the scientific method. He highlights how science has thrived through the open exchange of ideas, which contrasts sharply with historical practices of secrecy in witchcraft and alchemy. By advocating for openness, Torvalds suggests that collaborative improvement is essential for innovation, much like it is in scientific advancements.
Themes
Open SourceScienceCollaborationInnovationTransparency
In practice
Example use cases
In a tech conference speech emphasizing teamwork
More from Linus Torvalds
All quotes →I'm sitting in my home office wearing a bathrobe. The same way I'm not going to start wearing ties, I'm also not going to buy into the fake politeness, the lying, the office politics and backstabbing, the passive aggressiveness, and the buzzwords.
Linus TorvaldsRead
Avoiding complexity reduces bugs.
Linus TorvaldsRead
Most of the good programmers do programming not because they expect to get paid or get adulation by the public, but because it is fun to program.
Linus TorvaldsRead
I have an ego the size of a small planet.
Linus TorvaldsRead
I've felt strongly that the advantage of Linux is that it doesn't have a niche or any special market, but that different individuals and companies end up pushing it in the direction they want, and as such you end up with something that is pretty balanced across the board.
Linus TorvaldsRead
Similar quotes
As a theoretician, I am proud to be part of a counter revolution... discovering that quantum field theory language was not dead and finished but had not really been explored thoroughly enough.
Peter HiggsRead
Extinguished theologians lie about the cradle of every science as the strangled snakes beside that of Hercules; and history records that whenever science and orthodoxy have been fairly opposed, the latter has been forced to retire from the lists, bleeding and crushed if not annihilated; scotched, if not slain.
Thomas HuxleyRead
The fact remains that, if the supply of energy failed, modern civilization would come to an end as abruptly as does the music of an organ deprived of wind.
Frederick SoddyRead
Science is not a substitute for common sense, but an extension of it.
Willard Van Orman QuineRead
To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree.
Charles DarwinRead
Who would not have been laughed at if he had said in 1800 that metals could be extracted from their ores by electricity or that portraits could be drawn by chemistry.
Michael FaradayRead