Reading about FOSS philosophy, degoogling, becoming against corporations, and now a full-blown woke communist (like Linus Torvalds)

  • tal@kbin.social
    4312·
    1 year ago

    https://moneyinc.com/linus-torvalds-net-worth/

    How Linus Torvalds Achieved a Net Worth of $150 Million

    Red Hat and VA Linux went public, and since they acknowledged it would not have been possible without the programmer, Torvalds received shares reportedly worth $20 million. Before it went public, Red Hat had allegedly paid Torvalds $1 million in stock, which the programmer claims was the only big payout he received.

    He revealed that the rest of the stock Transmeta and another Linux startup awarded him were not worth much by the time he could sell them. However, in the case of his Red Hat stock, it must have been worth his while because, in 2012, Red Hat became the first $1 billion open-source company when it reached the billion-dollar mark in annual revenue.

    Whether he exercised his stock options is unclear, but the money he makes from the gains could be the reason why his net worth has continued to soar.

    Well, that’s one definition of being communist, I suppose. Myself, I think that it’s fairly safe to say that Torvalds is okay with private ownership of industry.

    • askat@programming.dev
      221·
      1 year ago

      I don’t know about his political views, but I think Linus deserves every last penny he got from Red Hat.

    • jeremyparker@programming.dev
      16·
      1 year ago

      There’s a gaping and dangerous misunderstanding in there. Having money or being successful under capitalism doesn’t mean you don’t see its flaws. The idea that rich people can’t be communists is like saying that only gay people can support gay rights.

      Believing that the world would be a better place if we pooled our resources has nothing to do with whether you created an operating system that all of global computing relies on.

    • nadir@lemmy.world
      171·
      1 year ago

      I’m no communist, but your argument is flawed.

      Linus is not representative of the Linux community and I think the famous Stallman rant regarding GNU/Linux is actually relevant here.

      The free software movement is certainly pretty left leaning, though I wouldn’t call them communist.

    • zephyreks
      195·
      1 year ago

      Tell me you haven’t read the Communist Manifesto without telling me you haven’t read the Communist Manifesto.

    • finnie@lemmy.world
      7·
      1 year ago

      I don’t even think the meme is about communism as much as it is just venting about how corps turned free-software into the panopticon it is today.

      But Idc if Torvalds is a Marxist bc I’m not either, but marx wrote about how the proletariat should own stocks, so that isn’t even disqualifying tho.

      And tbh I think most “marxists” just adopt that term because our political discourse is so corrupted that anyone who thinks that we shouldn’t curb-stomp an Amazon employee for wanting a bathroom break is treated like they’re Mao anyway.

      • cloudy1999@sh.itjust.works
        2·
        1 year ago

        I had to look up the panopticon reference, so I thought to share with others: ‘A proposed prison of supervision, so arranged that the inspector can see each of the prisoners at all times without being seen by them: proposed by Jeremy Bentam.’