Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Linus Torvalds: The King of Geeks (And Dad of 3)

wired.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–89 of 89 posts

Re: Linus Torvalds: The King of Geeks (And Dad of 3)

#81

Post by yitchelle »

ecaradec wrote: post #17
comice wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

as always though, what would more money actually buy him? Early retirement from something he seems to love doing?

I agree but it's still a bit sad to see such a giant gap between the value he brought to the world and the value he retired from it.

The gap is quite apparent in many of the tech pioneers life. For example, the late Dennis Ritchie was a pioneer for many, many technologies that I, and many other engineers, used on a daily basis for generating income. This gap for Dennis is enormous!

Re: Linus Torvalds: The King of Geeks (And Dad of 3)

#82

Post by comice »

cdibona wrote: post #66
sho_hn wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't be surprised if they did, but I think Linus has carefully avoided working for anyone who might be seen to have a less than neutral stake in Linux. He used to work at Transmeta, a CPU maker, and his first and only Linux-specific employment is at the non-profit Linux Foundation. That said, I also wouldn't be surprised if Google understands this well and hasn't tried to hire him because it makes sense for Lin…

Let me assure you that Linus knows full well he has an open offer at Google or any of a dozen companies.

he probably knows that no matter how hard you try, once you're employed by these big companies (or any company really) your values are compromised. Even just a little bit. Usually unconsciously.

And you're under their control. Even just a little bit. Both consciously and unconsciously :)

I do not exclude myself from this observation of course!

Re: Linus Torvalds: The King of Geeks (And Dad of 3)

#83

Post by slowpoke »

itmag wrote: post #80
ma2rten wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other reason is so that you can buy expensive stuff to impress your peers, but Linus found another way to impress his peers as well.

The third reason is so you can change the world.

Linus didn't and doesn't need money to change the world. He already did, and continues to do so.

Re: Linus Torvalds: The King of Geeks (And Dad of 3)

#84

Post by rada »

Killah911 wrote: post #65
pessimist wrote: post #8

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're able to control very little about the world and the way things turn out. Many people win the lottery. Heck, what's the point of doing a startup if you were just born into tons of money if money's the final goal? Richest guy in the graveyard or "remembered" guy in the graveyard, YOU'RE STILL IN THE GRAVEYARD. You can either be miserable your whole life and then some, by always thinking about how you're perceive…

To your last point, something I thought interesting: the kernel _reboot() system accepts his daughters birthdays as magic values.

http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6...

Re: Linus Torvalds: The King of Geeks (And Dad of 3)

#86

Post by iwwr »

rmc wrote: post #74
noonespecial wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be a tragedy if he had to spend his time managing a bunch of money he can't take with him anyway instead of doing what he loves and benefiting us all. It would be as big a waste as if he was broke and had to flip burgers to make ends meet. This is a rare case where reality seems to actually be optimized for all involved. We, the collective we, have done exceptionally well in this deal, and Linus probably has…

You only need to spend time managing money if you want to make the most of it. If you plonk €Xmillion in a bank account getting 2% interest per year, you can forget about it and you and your family can live quite happily.

Rarely would you get higher than inflation returns from just parking money in a bank. In reality it just gets eroded away.

Re: Linus Torvalds: The King of Geeks (And Dad of 3)

#87

Post by mountaineer »

sk5t wrote: post #63
mountaineer wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 6000 sq ft house in LO, the most affluent city in Oregon, would run a couple million dollars probably. Throw in the Mercedes and I think he's carved some money out over the years.

I will posit that nobody any significant distance from the west coast knows what "LO" is meant to signify. A little research suggests Lake Oswego, but really...

Whoops, it mentioned Lake Oswego in the article, so I thought it would be in context, I'll be clearer in the future.

Re: Linus Torvalds: The King of Geeks (And Dad of 3)

#88

Post by creamyhorror »

iwwr wrote: post #86
rmc wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You only need to spend time managing money if you want to make the most of it. If you plonk €Xmillion in a bank account getting 2% interest per year, you can forget about it and you and your family can live quite happily.

Rarely would you get higher than inflation returns from just parking money in a bank. In reality it just gets eroded away.

True. Which means that with "just" $1mil, he's going to have to manage his money a bit more than if he had tens of millions.

(maybe there should be a "thank linus" day sometime)

Re: Linus Torvalds: The King of Geeks (And Dad of 3)

#89

Post by rmk »

I am really getting sick of everybody and his uncle being compared to Steve Jobs. I mean, a comparison to Woz might not be out of place (both men were technical architects of things that revolutionised the industry), but Steve Jobs was a businessperson with an uncanny eye for industrial design, not the architecture of software.
Post reply on HN