LinuxPlanet: Editor’s Note: Money Changes Everything

[ Thanks to Kevin
Reichard for this link. ]

“It has been an amusing sight this week to see everyone
scurrying around to get their piece of the Great Linux Money Grab
1999. From Eric Raymond expressing great surprise at his sudden
wealth (yeah, right) to FSF/GNU acolytes expressing dismay that RMS
didn’t share in the wealth (ah, but purists are supposed to walk
around in hair shirts and receive genius grants) to Forbes magazine
expressing great disbelief that any Linux company could generate
the revenues to warrant the pricing of VA Linux Systems on its
first day of release, the stock market’s determination that
anything remotely Linux means big bucks has certainly forever
changed the Linux world. Even Andover.net, which has a rather
tenuous claim to being a “Linux” company (any “Linux” company that
publishes a Windows site like Slaughterhouse can’t claim to be a
pure Linux play), managed to share in the wealth. (Everyone except,
it seems, Linus Torvalds.)”

“But money changes everything, and in a few years we’ll see
whether the rush to wealth was a good thing or a bad
thing.“

Complete
Story