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A win for open source. I was just thinking the other day that it's a shame that Linus is not a billionaire. Seems he's doing just fine however: "Finnish-Americ
by b_emery 9y ago
A win for open source. I was just thinking the other day that it's a shame that Linus is not a billionaire. Seems he's doing just fine however:
"Finnish-American software engineer and hacker Linus Torvalds has as estimated net worth of $150 million and an estimated annual salary of $10 million. He earned his net worth as the principal force behind the development of the Linux kernel."
Source: https://www.therichest.com/celebnetworth/celebrity-business/tech-millionaire/linus-torvalds-net-worth/ https://www.therichest.com/celebnetworth/celebrity-business/...
- bearbearbear 9y agoPlease keep in mind however that many of the world's "supercomputers" are simply "bigger dick" projects where some government or organization slapped a few thousand blades into a rack and connected them with fiber crossbars so they could say they "built a supercomptuer." And also that there's no standardized definition of what a "supercomputer" is. My iPhone is not a "supercomputer" even though it has thousands of times more computing power than a Cray 1, which is considered a "supercomputer."
- vram22 9y agoInteresting, that site says his background is actually Swedish(-speaking, at least). >Born Linus Benedict Torvalds on December 28, 1969 in Helsinki, Finland, Torvalds is the son of journalists Ana and Nils Torvalds who belong to the Swedish-speaking minority.
- rootbear 9y agoWhen I visited Finland for this year's Worldcon (SF convention) I learned that all Finns learn Finnish and Swedish, the two official languages of Finland. Knowing some German, I found the Swedish street signs more helpful than the Finnish ones!
- vram22 9y ago:) Yes, since Swedish is a Germanic language, I suppose. I know a bit of German too, and have noticed that when I read words in Scandinavian languages, I can sometimes guess what they mean, due to their being similar to corresponding German words. Had been reading on Wikipedia about different human languages and their backgrounds and histories a while ago, and was interested to see that Finnish and Hungarian had stuff in common. They are both Uralic family languages according to Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_language
- GlennS 9y agoYou also appear to know English, another Germanic language.
- ekianjo 9y agoEnglish has been widely influenced by French after William the Conquerer and the Normands rule over England for almost 4 centuries. Take a look at Beowulf and good luck trying to understand the original germanic version of English. You won't.
- rootbear 9y agoThere is a whole branch of the conlang (constructed language) community that is interested in what English would be like if it hadn't been manhandled by Norman French. Science Fiction writer Poul Anderson wrote an essay in which he tried to use as few non-Anglo-Saxon words as possible, using calques from German where necessary. The result is sometimes said to be in "Anders-Saxon". The essay[1] is fun to read and has a Wikipedia page [2]. A friend said it was like reading one of the Norse sagas. [1] https://groups.google.com/forum/message/raw?msg=alt.language.artificial/ZL4e3fD7eW0/_7p8bKwLJWkJ https://groups.google.com/forum/message/raw?msg=alt.language... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncleftish_Beholding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncleftish_Beholding Sorry if this is way too much topic drift from Supercomputers!
- Skunkleton 9y agoLinus is awesome, and he deserves all of his success/money, and possibly more. But it is also important to recognize all of the others that were involved in making Linux such a success. Linux w/ only Linus would not have been the success it is today.
- dingo_bat 9y agoThat's true for everything. Apple wouldn't have been apple without Woz, but I'd argue Jobs had a much bigger role in making apple what it is. Similarly, Linus is the one who has built and shaped Linux into what it is today. Other people have of course contributed, but they haven't influenced Linux in any way. If not for these specific people, some others could have contributed and we'd have the same result today. But you cannot replace Linus like that.
- Skunkleton 9y agoWhat I mean is that it isn't just the Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, or Steve Wozniak that makes a product/idea/company what it is.
- devmunchies 9y agoInstead of all the money funneling into one person/org, that wealth (and several times more) was spread to the many people who built things on Linux.
- sidlls 9y agoThe vast majority of money made on open source actually lines the pockets of executives. Linus' wealth and the salaries of all the deverlopers who build Linux or stuff on Linux combined is less by far.
- deelowe 9y agoMany of those execs were undergrads or industry swes before they made their billions. Linux and open source should deserve some of the credit for their success.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- zanny 9y agoI don't think its so much a shame that Linus isn't a billionaire than it is we have billionaires at all. There is limited rational or ethical reason for one human being to accumulate so much centralized wealth. There is being rewarded for hard work / skill / innovation and there is exploiting people to become rich, and the line between those is very hard to distinguish when talking about individuals making more than 9 figures off of the endeavor. It is also worth considering you don't make billions operating a nonprofit or making a valuable software product (or any product, in general). You make billions founding or investing early into a multinational corporation that amasses more wealth than many nations. And that is where I think the conversation breaks down - people take personal offense to conversations about wealth and equality but we aren't talking about people wielding the influence of themselves as individuals, we are talking about people who control more assets than some nations, that can potentially have financial influence on the world stage greater than the combined influence of millions of fellow humans.
- sandworm101 9y ago>>> You make billions founding or investing early into a multinational corporation that amasses more wealth than many nations. Or you buy land in the 80s.
- pwim 9y agoThe linked article looks like SEO spam to me. There's no sources and the article looks like it's a rehash of Linus's wikipedia page. Given that his employer is the Linux Foundation, I'd be surprised if they were paying him $10 million per year, especially as it looks like only in 2015 did their salary expenses even exceed $10 million (https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/460503801 https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/460...).
- howoddalien 9y agoIt’s hard to say anyone should be a billionaire, frankly, let alone deserve it. Sad to see this attitude on HN.
- walshemj 9y agoOn HN? I don't think so :-) even to Socialist Workers Party in the Uk accept share options
- lern_too_spel 9y agoLinus joked about that page in the comments of one of his Google+ posts. It's apparently wildly inaccurate.
- godelski 9y ago> it's a shame that Linus is not a billionaire I mean $150m is a LOT of money. $10m/yr is a lot too. Just to put that into perspective, you could put that in a very safe ETF and make over $1m/yr. You could easily make $10m/yr just off interest. That's A LOT of money. And a lot of people would be perfectly content with that, let alone know what to do with it. I mean if you can rent the entire country of Lichtenstein for over 12 years, I'm sure you're pretty comfortable. I don't think Torvalds is in it for the money. Measuring success by somebody's net worth is a really poor metric.
- dingo_bat 9y agoYour whole comment is insightful and makes sense, but what about the last sentence? It is an unrelated statement tacked on without any support or connection to the rest of the paragraph.
- godelski 9y agoThe parent comment was implying that Linus SHOULD be a billionaire because he was so successful. I'm saying that measuring success with net worth is not a good metric. How are we defining success? I think it is a pretty personal thing. Success is really a question of "did you meet your goals?" and "how far did you exceed them?" or "how close did you get?" Money can help you meet a lot of goals, but I don't see how it determines success. We can even refine more. What is success to you? Total wealth? Leaving an impact on the world? Finding yourself? Being happy? Money definitely helps with all of these, but when you have the income we're talking about, how does it help you then? There are diminishing returns. The only version of success it substantially helps you with is if you measure success by wealth. And most people don't actually internalize that definition. So I personally do not feel like you can say Bezos is more successful than Gates. Or that Putin is more successful than either of them. Is Linus less any successful? You can't judge that without knowing what their goals are/were.
- dingo_bat 9y agoTo me $150 million is not much different from $1 billion. Maybe that just indicates I'm poor :)