Alan Chan

“For high school graduation in Finland, you wear a fluffy white hat with a black band. There's a ceremony in which they hand out diplomas, and when you come home all your relatives are there with lots of champagne, flowers, and cake. And there's also a party for the entire class at a local restaurant. We did all that, and I guess I had fun, but I don't remember anything special about it. But ask me about the specs on my 68008-chip machine and I can rattle them off with total recall.”
― Linus Torvalds, Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary

“I did learn fairly early that the best and most effective way to lead is by letting people do things because they want to do them, not because you want them to. The best leaders also know when they are wrong, and are capable of pulling themselves out. And the best leaders enable others to make decisions for them.

Let me rephrase that. Much ofLinux's success can be attrib­uted to my own personality flaws: 1) I'm lazy; and 2) I like to get credit for the work of others.”
― Linus Torvalds, Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary

“Humans are destined to be party animals, and technology will follow.”
― Linus Torvalds, Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary

“The theory behind open source is simple. In the case of an operating system, the source code-the programming instructions underlying the system-is free. Anyone can improve it, change it, exploit it. But those improvements, changes, and exploitations have to be made freely available. Think Zen. The project belongs to no one and to everyone. When a project is opened up, there is rapid and continual improvement. With teams of contributors working in parallel, the results can happen far more speedily and success­ fully than if the work were being conducted behind closed doors.”
― Linus Torvalds, Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary