Linus Torvalds- VC Money is Good for Open Source

jpheasant writes "Open Source startups are clearly the hottest thing in Silicon Valley right now, with every VC wanting to invest in an open source player. Linus Torvalds finally speaks up about this." This story selected and edited by LinuxWorld editor for the day Saied Pinto.

The first sentence and they've already lost it

[John Nowak]

FTA:
If open source were a religion, Linus Torvalds, the Finnish engineer who wrote the core of the operating system that would become Linux, would be its prophet.

RMS? Hello?

Free software != open source

[tepples]

If open source were a religion, Linus Torvalds [...] would be its prophet.

RMS? Hello?

RMS is the prophet of free software, not open source. The goals are different, even if the methods are much the same.

Re:Bitkeeper.

[Aim Here]

Erm, hardly. Linus didn't really drop BitKeeper; he was pushed. Larry McVoy stopped letting Open Source developers use the Bitkeeper software for free, because Andrew Tridgell decided to try making a competing free (speechwise) software client that operated with the BitKeeper server. Apparently McVoy really, really, doesn't like competition.

The people who objected to the use of Bitkeeper were proved right all along, on purely practical grounds; it's absolutely foolish for you to depend on software which can be pulled away from you at the whim of one person or one company. If I was a builder, there's no way on earth I'd use bricks, or tools, that would turn to dust if if the manufacturer decides to press a red button on the CEO's desk. That would be a disaster waiting to happen. Software is no different.

What you called 'zealots' here are really pragmatists.