Not true. The awards from MacArthur and Takeda that Stallman received when combined total to just over half a million USD[1][2]. Keep in mind that this is spr

Not true. The awards from MacArthur and Takeda that Stallman received when combined total to just over half a million USD[1][2]. Keep in mind that this is spread across all of GNU and to keep the FSF machine going as well. Meanwhile, Tanenbaum's grants from the EU total approx $6 million for the express purpose of producing a reliable microkernel and to build an operating system on top of it[3], all under the auspices of a research university. And as others have noted, most of MINIX's userland is the result of splicing in large parts of the existing NetBSD userland, so the skew in attention that the kernel received is pretty significant, cf GNU's Hurd. 1. http://tech.mit.edu/V110/N30/rms.30n.html http://tech.mit.edu/V110/N30/rms.30n.html 2. http://www.gnu.org/press/2001-12-03-Takeda.html http://www.gnu.org/press/2001-12-03-Takeda.html 3. https://www.bsdcan.org/2015/schedule/speakers/258.en.html https://www.bsdcan.org/2015/schedule/speakers/258.en.html