Linux has definitely made a lot of sense even in a purely materialistic sense.
The memory management on the PowerPC can be used to frighten small children.
I love making friends.... it's people I can't stand.
Bill Gates really seems to be much more of a business man than a technologist, while I prefer to think of Linux in technical terms rather than as a means to money. As such, I'm not very likely to make the same kind of money that Bill made.
Microsoft isn't evil, they just make really crappy operating systems.
I don't doubt at all that virtualization is useful in some areas. What I doubt rather strongly is that it will ever have the kind of impact that the people involved in virtualization want it to have.