“Linux poster boy (and Linux originator) Linus Torvalds made
clear to New York City and the rest of the world that Linux is not
an anti-commercial endeavor.”
“Linux is very often seen as non-commercial, as having
non-commercial values,” Torvalds told a huge audience in his
keynote speech kicking off LinuxWorld 2000. When it was first
created, “Linux wasn’t a very good product,” Torvalds said. But, he
added, “The commercial people are really making Linux a system that
people want to use.”
“In other words, Linux never would have gotten anywhere if it
had not been commercialized. That idea may seem obvious in a
post-1960s world. Nonetheless, there is a real and persistent
notion that says Linux software developers, who devoted their own
time to created Linux, resent commercialization.”