
1990s, Why "Free Software" is better than "Open Source" (1998)
Financial Times interview (18 April 2006) http://us.ft.com/ftgateway/superpage.ft?news_id=fto041820061306424713.
Context: If an open source product gets good enough, we'll simply take it. So the great thing about open source is nobody owns it – a company like Oracle is free to take it for nothing, include it in our products and charge for support, and that's what we'll do. So it is not disruptive at all – you have to find places to add value. Once open source gets good enough, competing with it would be insane. … We don't have to fight open source, we have to exploit open source.
1990s, Why "Free Software" is better than "Open Source" (1998)
Quoted in "Linux Game Publishing: An Interview With Michael Simms" http://web.archive.org/web/20050712080821/http://www.linuxgazette.com/node/10249 Linux Gazette (2005-06-03)
2005 National DNA Day Online Chatroom Transcript, https://www.genome.gov/DNADay/q.cfm?aid=5419&year=2005
Source: Master of Precision: Henry M. Leland, 1966, p. 59
“Good intentions and inspiration are simply not enough.”
Thank Goodness! (2006)
Context: One thing in particular struck me when I compared the medical world on which my life now depended with the religious institutions I have been studying so intensively in recent years. One of the gentler, more supportive themes to be found in every religion (so far as I know) is the idea that what really matters is what is in your heart: if you have good intentions, and are trying to do what (God says) is right, that is all anyone can ask. Not so in medicine! If you are wrong —especially if you should have known better — your good intentions count for almost nothing. And whereas taking a leap of faith and acting without further scrutiny of one's options is often celebrated by religions, it is considered a grave sin in medicine. A doctor whose devout faith in his personal revelations about how to treat aortic aneurysm led him to engage in untested trials with human patients would be severely reprimanded if not driven out of medicine altogether. There are exceptions, of course. A few swashbuckling, risk-taking pioneers are tolerated and (if they prove to be right) eventually honored, but they can exist only as rare exceptions to the ideal of the methodical investigator who scrupulously rules out alternative theories before putting his own into practice. Good intentions and inspiration are simply not enough.In other words, whereas religions may serve a benign purpose by letting many people feel comfortable with the level of morality they themselves can attain, no religion holds its members to the high standards of moral responsibility that the secular world of science and medicine does! And I'm not just talking about the standards 'at the top' — among the surgeons and doctors who make life or death decisions every day. I'm talking about the standards of conscientiousness endorsed by the lab technicians and meal preparers, too. This tradition puts its faith in the unlimited application of reason and empirical inquiry, checking and re-checking, and getting in the habit of asking "What if I'm wrong?" Appeals to faith or membership are never tolerated. Imagine the reception a scientist would get if he tried to suggest that others couldn't replicate his results because they just didn't share the faith of the people in his lab! And, to return to my main point, it is the goodness of this tradition of reason and open inquiry that I thank for my being alive today.
Quoted in "Linux Game Publishing - it's possible" http://mstation.org/linuxgamepublishing.php M station (2003)
Source: Rigante series, Stormrider, Ch. 7
Context: No need for confusion, my dear Mulgrave [... ] Beautiful wine and sour vinegar come from exactly the same source. Curiously if one leaves a bottle of wine open for long enough it will become vinegar. Happily in this house wine never survives long enough to go bad.
Source: Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations (2008), p. 139-140
" resignation and postmortem http://www.jwz.org/gruntle/nomo.html" (essay)