RedHat's $1m stock is his only big payout, apparently. Rather sad, considering the number of mid-level facebook engineers who will become many times as rich in a few months.
You don't (and won't) even know their names How in god's name can the guy who (corrected) had linux named after him ever feel sad?
He didn't want to; Torvalds named it "Freax", as he says here:
> Honest I didn't want to ever release it under the name Linux because it was too egotistical. What was the name I reserved for any eventual release? Freax. (Get it? Freaks with the requisite X.) In fact, some of the early make files --the files that describe how to compile the sources-- included the word "Freax" for about half a year. But it really didn't matter. At that point I didn't need a name for it because I wasn't releasing it to anybody.
> And Ari Lemke, who insured that it made its way to the ftp site, hated the name Freax. He preferred the other working name I admit that I didn't put up much of a fight. But it was his doing. So I can honestly say I wasn't egotistical, or half-honestly say I wasn't egotistical. But I thought okay, that's a good name, and I can always blame somebody else for it, which I'm doing now.
> -- Linus Torvalds p84 and p88 "Just for fun"