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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.
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?
Either one is BEST when it's free.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
RMS? Hello?
... RMS is a deity, not a mere prophet.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
not deliberately trolling... but he seems like the kind of guy who gets drunk and says things that a lot of people are actually thinking, but are too ashamed to say aloud even when drunk.
When you become certain that what you have is scalable and it will suffer from not having the cash to accomplish documentation, marketing and staffing commensurate with the demand, then go for it. Folks on the East Coast might want to talk with Mike Roer http://www.cvg.org/asp/contactus.asp.
Hope you get very rich!
Lost in space at an early age. Survived the vacuum. Now rebuilding castle in air.
... Or have I just seen too many war movies lately?
of course, it's Venture Capital(ist) in case you were wondering
Sigs are bad for your health
And his assertion that "VC" (Viet Cong) money is good for open source just proves it! I didn't want to believe all the stuff that Microsoft has been saying, but this is just too much!
(I'm kidding... no, really... please mod +1 Funny)
If you told RMS this, he'd probably slap you (or at least verbally abuse you): remember RMS == Free Software, not open source.
I used to work at a startup where the founders would occasionally give venture capitalists the big tour. We rank-and-file workers, well aware that any VC investor would inevitably install its own stooges in senior management and basically undermine and overthrow the company for short-term gain, referred to these people as "Victor Charlie."
Breakfast served all day!
Have to love the /-shit mentality of throwing things out without have the slightest clue.
Linus did not abandon BK because of his issues with it. He abandoned it because he was tired of fighting with zealots over what was primarily a personal choice. Linus never required a kernel developer to adopt BK. In fact, Alan Cox never used it, even when he was in Morton's position of the stable release maintainer.
RMS is the prophet of free software, not open source. The goals are different, even if the methods are much the same.
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.
RMS is the crazy guy with the beard and the sign that reads "The end is near! Repent and join the hurd!"
My other first post is car post.
I guess it's easy, if you have a long ongoing project, but who could you contact, if you have an OSS based idea and need some money to create a prototype?