NEW, IMPROVED, WITH EXTRA LAWYERS!

“Some of you may have heard of this crazy company called SCO (aka ‘Smoking Crack Organization’) who seem to have a hard time believing that open source works better than their five engineers do.”

Linus Torvalds, explaining who’s to blame for the new paperwork Linux developers have to fill out when they contribute code to the open-source operating system, Wired News, 24 May 2004

LOWERING THE BARRIER TO PUNDITRY

“What blogging and these notifications are about is that you make it very easy to communicate.”

Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, on how blogs help his company spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt, BBC News, 21 May 2004

THE FOURTH LAW OF ROBOTICS: DON’T SCAN EMAIL

“As commercial email services go, Gmail’s extremely benign, and unless you’re scared about evil email-scanning robots, there’s not much to worry about.”

Sean Michaels, creator of a site for swapping goods for invitations to join Google’s free email service, Wired News, 20 May 2004

COMPUTERS ARE SO 1999

“We now believe that the boundaries of this industry are expanding.”

IBM CEO Sam Palmisano, on how his company plans to get away from that whole messy PC business, News.com, 19 May 2004

FILTER OUT THE VOTE

“I think that people are perhaps getting a little carried away in fighting spam.”

Cindy Cohn, legal director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, on why politicians deserve to pollute your inbox, News.com, 17 May 2004