Oracle, the new software assimilator?
"When I was at Oracle, we watched Computer Associates buy all those mainframe software companies and milk them for their license
revenue. I never thought that's what Oracle would be doing one day, and yet, here it is." -- Marc Benioff, Salesforce.com
Inc. founder and CEO, as Oracle Corp.'s hunger for enterprise software companies continues. (Sept. 9.)
"I know you're all wondering: is there some strategy behind all this bizarre behavior over the last six months, us buying
all these companies, or is it just Oracle being Oracle?" -- Oracle President Charles Phillips. Hint: so far, the latter explanation
looks like the right answer. (April 18.)
Don't know much about ... much
"I know what I don't know, and to this day I don't know technology and I don't know accounting and finance." -- Bernie Ebbers,
former WorldCom Inc. CEO, speaking in his defense, yes, you've got that right, in his defense during the WorldCom fraud trial.
He was found guilty and sentenced to 25 years in prison, though he's yet to go to the big house because he's appealing his
sentence. (March 1.)
"What were you going to do with the rest of your afternoon, offer jobs to Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds? Or were you
going to stick to something easier, like talking Pope Benedict into presiding at a Satanist orgy?" -- Eric Raymond, one of
the prime movers in the open-source movement, who also describes himself as "Microsoft's worst nightmare" after he received
an e-mail pitch from Microsoft asking if he was interested in a job. (Sept. 9.)
Telling it like it is
"I'm an egotistical bastard, so I name all my projects after myself. First Linux, now git." -- Creator of the Linux operating
system Linus Torvalds in typical self-deprecating mode, on why he used the British slang for "idiot" as the title of his latest
software project. Ah, bless, you can't help but love this guy. (April 19.)
"Getting kicked upstairs and out of the way," -- How Craig Barrett humorously referred to leaving his long-time role as Intel
Corp. president to trade up to chairman. (March 1.)
Nice to meet you -- I think
"We have so many rivals it's frightening. The week after next I will meet Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and I will [shake hands
and] look down and see if I still have a hand." Sony's Stringer on his role at the top of the Japanese electronics giant.
He added that his family thought he was "insane" to take the job. (June 22.)
"There are times when I get through the day by looking around the office and thinking, 'My God, aren't the natives here strange.'"
-- Genevieve Bell, an anthropologist at Intel, on how she never gives up on her day job, describing being at the chip giant
as a "field trip." (Sept. 15.)
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