Before the commercial ventures, Linux tended to be rather hard to set up, because most of the developers were motivated mainly by their own interests.
Linus TorvaldsBeing open source meant that I could work on the technical side (along with lots of other people), and others who had the interest and inclination could start up companies around it.
Linus TorvaldsIn science, the whole system builds on people looking at other people's results and building on top of them. In witchcraft, somebody had a small secret and guarded it - but never allowed others to really understand it and build on it. Traditional software is like witchcraft. In history, witchcraft just died out. The same will happen in software. When problems get serious enough, you can't have one person or one company guarding their secrets. You have to have everybody share in the knowledge.
Linus Torvalds