Linux has definitely made a lot of sense even in a purely materialistic sense.

The thing I love about diving is the flowing feeling. I like a sport where the whole point is to move as little as humanly possible so your air supply will last longer. That's my kind of sport. Where the amount of effort spent is absolutely minimal.

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

A lot of people want to have market share numbers, lots of users, because that's how they view their self worth. For me, one of the most important things for Linux is having a big community that is actively testing new kernels; it's the only way to support the absolute insane amount of different hardware we deal with.

Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships.

Software patents, in particular, are very ripe for abuse. The whole system encourages big corporations getting thousands and thousands of patents. Individuals almost never get them.

I've never regretted not making Linux shareware: I really don't like the "pay for use" binary shareware programs.