Software patents are dangerous to software developers because they impose monopolies on software ideas.
Open source production has shown us that world-class software, like Linux and Mozilla, can be created with neither the bureaucratic structure of the firm nor the incentives of the marketplace as we've known them.
My prior stint at 'Newsweek' was a very different world. So it's what it's like to be in one of these kooky software startups as a grown up. It's not entirely pleasant! It's like, 'Oh, I don't fit.'
When people think of the oil industry, they think of Rockefeller, much like when people think of the software industry, they think of Bill Gates.
The more money Automattic makes, the more we invest into Free and Open Source software that belongs to everybody and services to make that software sing.
Proprietary software grew up, starting really in the 1980s, as an alternative and that became the dominant model with the rise of companies like Microsoft and Oracle and the like.
Google is already overflowing with incredibly creative bright groups already working on lots of the software problems of the world.
Digital art software has empowered both the painterly side of photographers, and the photographer side of painters.
I think software patents are a bad idea. Many patents are given for trivial inventions.
In the early days of the software industry, people cared about copyright and didn't give a damn about patents - they copied each other willy-nilly.
We're trying to make our software available to users in as economically efficient a way as possible. That means distributing the software directly to them; taking payment through Mastercard, Visa, Paypal, and other options; and not having a store take 30 percent.
My own theory is that we are in the middle of a dramatic and broad technological and economic shift in which software companies are poised to take over large swathes of the economy.
A minimum precaution: keep your anti-malware protections up to date, and install security updates for all your software as soon as they arrive.
In a previous life I wrote the software that controlled my physics experiments. That software had to deal with all kinds of possible failures in equipment. That is probably where I learned to rely on multiple safety nets inside and around my systems.
As for the device we now call a TV or a cable box, I want it to be fast with a clean interface and seamlessly upgradeable to the latest software. I want it to be the primary source of all TV, not an ancillary device.
Most people assume that once security software is installed, they're protected. This isn't the case. It's critical that companies be proactive in thinking about security on a long-term basis.
I found out that most programmers don't like to test their software as intensely as I do.
Yahoo is free, it's fast and it's Web-centric. AOL is slow, it costs money and requires proprietary software.
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.
Proprietary software is an injustice.