Comment by abetusk

Money is necessary for many projects and people but this hides a lot of the charitable motivation. Circa 2000s, it wasn't clear at all what a good fit for Torvalds was and he talked about visiting Apple and talking to Steve Jobs (and being unimpressed with Jobs' smugness) [0]. There was a stint at Transmeta until, ultimately, a non-profit organization was setup pretty much for him/Linux so that he could focus on Linux development solely.

Many software developers are 'subsidized' by their employer in that they're allowed, or encouraged, to contribute to FOSS development (kernel development, etc.) but I would bet that this is the result of advocacy and desire of the software developers, not so much of the organizations they're part of.

Demand side value of open source is estimated at $8T+ [1]. It's hard to argue what might have been but I think there's a very real argument that Torvalds walked away from being a billionaire and settled for being a millionaire to work on Linux.

[0] https://www.bwass.org/bucket/Just-for-Fun.pdf (pg 150)

[1] https://www.hbs.edu/ris/Publication%20Files/24-038_51f8444f-...