3 ms·
A lot of people and companies are making money from Linux, including Linus Torvalds and many kernel hackers. Linux is GPL’d. I think it is hard to make the clai
by nequo 4y ago
A lot of people and companies are making money from Linux, including Linus Torvalds and many kernel hackers. Linux is GPL’d. I think it is hard to make the claim that making money is antithetical to FOSS.
- nextlevelwizard 4y agoA lot of people are also making money by simply running
- zaik 4y agoThis is quite the definition of an outlier.
- nequo 4y ago“Antithetical” is a normative, not a descriptive statement. The fact that a high-profile FOSS counterexample exists is in contradiction with it.
- rizky05 4y ago
- ilyt 4y agoI mean, if you look at amount of "paying users" vs "all users" it still checks out, just that at the economies of scale of Linux even 0.01% funding it is a ton of money. FOSS is great for doing "common good" code that everyone uses and many sides want to push forward, but not exactly easy to monetize if you're just a dev doing a thing.
- Havoc 4y agoI’d say “some” is more accurate than “ a lot” The first name that came to your mind was Torvalds - hardly a random.
- nequo 4y agoMany companies hire people to contribute to the kernel. Torvalds is the name we remember but there are many others. And that is the kernel. There are also companies like Red Hat and Canonical that make money through their work (more) in the userland. The people that they hire all make money from FOSS. Edit: For example, look at the “Most active 5.10 employers” list here: https://lwn.net/Articles/839772/ https://lwn.net/Articles/839772/