“Si vous utilisez des recettes de cuisine, vous avez probablement fait l'expérience de recevoir la copie d'une recette de la part d'un ami qui la partage avec vous. Et vous avez sans doute fait également l'expérience - à moins d'être un néophyte complet - de changer cette recette. Cette modification, vous la transmettez à d'autres en faisant des copies. Un programme d'ordinateur est comme une recette de cuisine.”
Discours- Université de New-York 2001
Extrait de ce discours : "And, if you use recipes, you've probably had the experience of
getting a copy of a recipe from a friend who's sharing it. And you've
probably also had the experience -- unless you're a total neophyte -- of
changing a recipe. You know, it says certain things, but you don't have
to do exactly that. You can leave out some ingredients. Add some
mushrooms, 'cause you like mushrooms. Put in less salt because your
doctor said you should cut down on salt -- whatever. You can even make
bigger changes according to your skill. And if you've made changes in a
recipe, and you cook it for your friends, and they like it, one of your
friends might say, "Hey, could I have the recipe?" And then, what do you
do? You could write down your modified version of the recipe and make a
copy for your friend. These are the natural things to do with
functionally useful recipes of any kind.
Now a recipe is a lot like a computer program. A computer program's a lot
like a recipe: a series of steps to be carried out to get some result
that you want. So it's just as natural to do those same things with
computer programs -- hand a copy to your friend. Make changes in it
because the job it was written to do isn't exactly what you want. "
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/rms-nyu-2001-transcript.txt