A consumer doesn't take anything away: he doesn't actually consume anything. Giving the same thing to a thousand consumers is not really any more expensive than giving it to just one.

In 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.

In my opinion MS is a lot better at making money than it is at making good operating systems.

The NIH syndrome (Not Invented Here) is a disease.

Intelligence is the ability to avoid doing work, yet getting the work done.

I'd argue that everybody wants to do something that matters, and the fact that Linux has had a huge impact on the tech market and is used virtually everywhere is obviously very personally satisfying. I think programming is fun, and the community around the kernel is great, but a project has to be relevant too.

That's what makes Linux so good: you put in something, and that effort multiplies. It's a positive feedback cycle.