7 ms·
Linus Torvalds was paid $1.6M in 2018
- gigatexal 5y agoHonestly that’s low compared to how important he is to the Kernel.
- ent101 5y agoI agree. But tbh when I first searched for the data I was worried the amount would be even less than this...
- ceva 5y agoHe should be the only true billionaire, known for making such a positive impact to the world and community..
- nabla9 5y agoLinus is not getting stock options from the Linux Foundation, so the cash pay must compensate for that. Senior VP's at Google earned little over $600,000, but their total compensation was over $50 million in 2020. Linus is giving up extra zero to work for the foundation. (Microsoft paid $7.5 billion for Github. That business was born from a side project he quickly whipped up.)
- bawolff 5y agoHard for me to get worked up over this. How much were people like steve jobs or bill gates paid? If anything he deserves more.
- Amfy 5y ago> If anything he deserves more. +1
- ent101 5y agoI agree. I was hoping for a much larger amount and yet expected a much lower amount.
- peakaboo 5y agoExactly. I'm happy to see comments like yours. He gave Linux to the world for free and made sure it couldn't be turned into a corporate product. The guy is as close to a hero as we get in tech.
- ryandvm 5y agoNot just Linux, but Git too. So not only do most of the computers in the world run Linux, there's an entire ecosystem of the Internet based off of one of his side projects. Talk about proving that you're not a one-hit wonder...
- rambojazz 5y agoYou speak like he wrote the Kernel (and Git) all by himself.
- ASalazarMX 5y agoAt some point he did IIRC.
- MrMember 5y agoI read the title and thought, "That's it?"
- carlsborg 5y agoHe could incorporate and become a deca-billionaire overnight.
- majewsky 5y agoHe is incorporated, but as a foundation, not as a company.
- Semaphor 5y agoThis brought back a thought I recently had: Is there any kind of public succession plan for when Linus eventually dies?
- Y_Y 5y agoUse something like FleshGolem to install a recent release of Vüdü with at least a 5.1 kernel. http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/articles/installing-linux-on-a-dead-badger-users-notes/ http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/articles/installing-l...
- harel 5y agoGood for him. Hope his takeaway increases. He earned it.
- ent101 5y agoWhy was this flagged?!
- rvz 5y agoHN is just beyond me sometimes. No reasons for flagging this whatsoever. Why not ask dang?
- jsiepkes 5y agoProbably because the headline is misleading. He doesn't get paid 1.6M (which he would be very well entitled to if you ask me). For example if you you look at the report you can see that 900K of the total 1.6M is listed as "Retirement and other deferred compensation". I don't know what that means but "deferred compensation" seems to me like something else then getting paid. Paid means "money in hand" in my books. Everything else is compensation.
- orev 5y agoNo, “deferred compensation” is very much money that has been paid to you, but you don’t immediately have access to it because it is stored in an account with some kind of restriction, like a 401k or IRA. This is done to avoid having to pay a huge amount of taxes in one year, so the payments can be spread out over multiple years. There is almost always an option to invest the money so you don’t miss out on gains while you’re waiting for each payout.
- phtrivier 5y agoDoes anyone have any idea about what exactly constitutes the "Other" column ? I don't know how to read the table for a foundation, so it's not clear if it's just "bonuses", taken from the general budget, or if it might be something else (say, "speaker fees" or "consulting" gigs that are done in his name, but channel through the foundation, etc... No idea what I'm taking about, here, so just curious !)
- Antoninus 5y agoUnderpaid TBH.
- dtech 5y agoSo that's a little bit more or roughly comparable to the highest paid engineering positions in FAANG. He deserves 10x more at least.