What's your favorite open source phrase?

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open source sayings

Opensource.com

They're not our favorite movie quotes but I've caught myself saying some of the more popular open source phrases more than once. It might be an analogy that we use to describe what open source is or perhaps a conversation starter.



Which of these phrases do you use the most? And which ones aren't on the list that should be? Tell us in the comments.

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Jason Hibbets is a Community Director at Red Hat with the Digital Communities team. He works with the Enable Architect, Enable Sysadmin, Enterprisers Project, and Opensource.com community publications.

32 Comments

"Patches happily accepted!"

Ohhhh, that's a good one!
Jason

"It's not a bug, it's a feature."

That's a Microsoft phrase, not an open source phrase.

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Steve Stites

That's a universal phrase. The MS version would be "it's not a bug, it's just broke."

it's certainly used very often, but not exclusively on open source...

FOSS: High reliability, it's a state of mind.
Microsoft: Failure is not an option, it comes bundled with windows
Apple: Failure is not an option, it's a file system.

"Software is like sex: it's better when it's free." - Linus Torvalds

I was really close to putting that one in this poll. Maybe next time.
Jason

"Free as in speech, not as in beer."

YES, it's free as in speech, the other is NOT free software (and it's used to mark that difference)

RTFM is my favorite anything phrase.

<em>Build it and they will come</em> has another background, but works for the open source community and is less branded than 'Just do it'.
On a more specialized note, one of my favorites is <em>"A result computed by a “mathematical” system, whose source code is not public, can not be accepted as part of a mathematical proof"</em> from <a href="http://www.texmacs.org/tmweb/about/philosophy.en.html">Why freedom is important for scientists</a> by Joris van der Hoeven from the GNU TeXmacs project.

Open source. Open minds. Open future.

show me the code

"If you think that your program users are stupid, only the stupid gonna use your program" - Linus Torvalds

"Most 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 Torvalds

No windows for virus :)

Here, have a copy. It's yours.

"Unix is simple. It just takes a genius to understand its simplicity." – Dennis Ritchie

Free as in freedom.

free software, free society

Open source IS user-friendly ... it's just very picky about its friends.

jk jk

"20xx is the year of Linux on the desktop!"

"free."

"Thou Shalt Be Free! ( this is an order, whatever it takes...)"
This one is for FOSS terrorists...

It just works.

Research, Adopt, Adapt

May the source be with you.

My vote is for: Free as in speech, not as in beer. That should have been the full quote in the original poll. Free as in beer is just a useful consequence (but not necessarily the only option) of the other kind of freedom.

"Open source; it's not life or death; it's much more important than that"

Free as in kittens!

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