Slideshow

Say what? From the mouths of executives

Famous technology personality made the following statements

  • Who said this? "Adobe claims that we are a closed system, and that Flash is open, but in fact the opposite is true." Steve Jobs, in a rare public essay posted on the Apple Web site on April 2010. It was entitled "Thoughts on Flash."

  • From the mouths of executives Earlier this month, Microsoft's chief operating officer, Kevin Turner made a statement that sent everyone's jaws a-dropping. "It looks like the iPhone 4 might be their Vista, and I'm OK with that," he said during a keynote speech at the company's annual partner conference. After years of defending Vista -- and asking this particular group to vigorously do so -- one of Microsoft's top executives was now using the brand name as a synonym for "broken, disastrous flop." Nice. It got me thinking about quotes that have and will go down in history from the industry's most famous executives. Can you guess who made the following statements?

  • Who said this? "I think people can generally trust me, but they can trust me exactly because they know they don't have to."

  • Who said this? "I think people can generally trust me, but they can trust me exactly because they know they don't have to." Linus Torvalds, (2006-09-22). Message to Linux kernel mailing list. Retrieved on 2008-06-07.

  • Who said this? "Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning."

  • Who said this? Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning." Bill Gates in an interview with Business @ The Speed of Thought in 1999

  • Who said this? "Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches."

  • Who said this? "Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches." Steve Ballmer, in an interview with the Chicago Sun-Times, in 2001

  • Who said this? "I'm surprised at the extent of the bigotry. But it really plays out when companies or schools take a side and prohibit the other platform at all. We Mac users should be good even when the other side is bad. We should do what we can to accept the other platforms. All the best people in life seem to like LINUX."

  • Who said this? I'm surprised at the extent of the bigotry. But it really plays out when companies or schools take a side and prohibit the other platform at all. We Mac users should be good even when the other side is bad. We should do what we can to accept the other platforms. All the best people in life seem to like LINUX. Steve Wozniak on his Website, "Letters-General Questions Answered" p.1, Jan.15, 2000

  • Who said this? "If an open source product gets good enough, we'll simply take it. … include it in our products and charge for support … Once open source gets good enough, competing with it would be insane."

  • Who said this? "If an open source product gets good enough, we'll simply take it. … include it in our products and charge for support … Once open source gets good enough, competing with it would be insane." Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle, in an interview with The Financial Times in 2006.

  • Who said this? "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."

  • Who said this? If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google discussing online privacy during an interview for CNBC in December 2009.

  • Who said this? "We do not share your personal information with people or services you don't want."

  • Who said this? "We do not share your personal information with people or services you don't want." Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, in an editorial penned by him and published in The Washington Post on May 24, 2010.

  • Who said this? "Adobe claims that we are a closed system, and that Flash is open, but in fact the opposite is true."

  • Who said this? "We don't have a proprietary operating system that only operates in our products."

  • Who said this? "We don't have a proprietary operating system that only operates in our products." John Chambers, CEO of Cisco, in an interview with Network World, March 12, 2010

Show Comments

Don’t have an account? Sign up here

Don't have an account? Sign up now

Forgot password?