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.
Linus TorvaldsIn many cases the user interface to a program is the most important part for a commercial company: whether the programs works correctly or not seems to be secondary.
Linus TorvaldsSee, you not only have to be a good coder to create a system like Linux, you have to be a sneaky bastard too.
Linus TorvaldsQuite frankly, even if the choice of C were to do *nothing* but keep the C++ programmers out, that in itself would be a huge reason to use C.
Linus Torvalds