<story><title>All 500 of the world&apos;s top 500 supercomputers are running Linux</title><url>http://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-totally-dominates-supercomputers/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>zanny</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t think its so much a shame that Linus isn&amp;#x27;t a billionaire than it is we have billionaires at all.&lt;p&gt;There is limited rational or ethical reason for one human being to accumulate so much centralized wealth. There is being rewarded for hard work &amp;#x2F; skill &amp;#x2F; innovation and there is exploiting people to become rich, and the line between those is very hard to distinguish when talking about individuals making more than 9 figures off of the endeavor.&lt;p&gt;It is also worth considering you don&amp;#x27;t make billions operating a nonprofit or making a valuable software product (or any product, in general). You make billions founding or investing early into a multinational corporation that amasses more wealth than many nations.&lt;p&gt;And that is where I think the conversation breaks down - people take personal offense to conversations about wealth and equality but we aren&amp;#x27;t talking about people wielding the influence of themselves &lt;i&gt;as&lt;/i&gt; individuals, we are talking about people who control more assets than some nations, that can potentially have financial influence on the world stage greater than the combined influence of millions of fellow humans.</text></item><item><author>b_emery</author><text>A win for open source. I was just thinking the other day that it&amp;#x27;s a shame that Linus is not a billionaire. Seems he&amp;#x27;s doing just fine however:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Finnish-American software engineer and hacker Linus Torvalds has as estimated net worth of $150 million and an estimated annual salary of $10 million. He earned his net worth as the principal force behind the development of the Linux kernel.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.therichest.com&amp;#x2F;celebnetworth&amp;#x2F;celebrity-business&amp;#x2F;tech-millionaire&amp;#x2F;linus-torvalds-net-worth&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.therichest.com&amp;#x2F;celebnetworth&amp;#x2F;celebrity-business&amp;#x2F;...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>JoshTriplett</author><text>&amp;gt; There is limited rational or ethical reason for one human being to accumulate so much centralized wealth&lt;p&gt;First: yes, there &lt;i&gt;are&lt;/i&gt; ethical reasons to accumulate so many &lt;i&gt;resources&lt;/i&gt;: because some problems are incredibly hard to solve and need a lot of resources to even start to solve.&lt;p&gt;Second, it is not on the people who have earned something to prove why they should be &amp;quot;permitted&amp;quot; to keep it; it&amp;#x27;s on the people who believe it should be taken away from them to justify &lt;i&gt;that&lt;/i&gt;.  Saying &amp;quot;it&amp;#x27;s a shame that there are billionaires&amp;quot; is a complaint that some people are wildly successful and shouldn&amp;#x27;t be, or that they shouldn&amp;#x27;t be permitted to keep what they earn.  There is justifiable resentment and offense to a conversation that starts with a thinly veiled demand for justification, rather than a presentation of justification.  The burden of proof is approached the wrong way, and nobody seems to discuss &lt;i&gt;that&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;(I&amp;#x27;m not interested in quibbles over the word &amp;quot;earn&amp;quot; here.)&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s not a shame that there exist billionaires. It&amp;#x27;s a shame that there exist people with nothing. The former doesn&amp;#x27;t need fixing; the latter absolutely does.</text></comment>
<story><title>All 500 of the world&apos;s top 500 supercomputers are running Linux</title><url>http://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-totally-dominates-supercomputers/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>zanny</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t think its so much a shame that Linus isn&amp;#x27;t a billionaire than it is we have billionaires at all.&lt;p&gt;There is limited rational or ethical reason for one human being to accumulate so much centralized wealth. There is being rewarded for hard work &amp;#x2F; skill &amp;#x2F; innovation and there is exploiting people to become rich, and the line between those is very hard to distinguish when talking about individuals making more than 9 figures off of the endeavor.&lt;p&gt;It is also worth considering you don&amp;#x27;t make billions operating a nonprofit or making a valuable software product (or any product, in general). You make billions founding or investing early into a multinational corporation that amasses more wealth than many nations.&lt;p&gt;And that is where I think the conversation breaks down - people take personal offense to conversations about wealth and equality but we aren&amp;#x27;t talking about people wielding the influence of themselves &lt;i&gt;as&lt;/i&gt; individuals, we are talking about people who control more assets than some nations, that can potentially have financial influence on the world stage greater than the combined influence of millions of fellow humans.</text></item><item><author>b_emery</author><text>A win for open source. I was just thinking the other day that it&amp;#x27;s a shame that Linus is not a billionaire. Seems he&amp;#x27;s doing just fine however:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Finnish-American software engineer and hacker Linus Torvalds has as estimated net worth of $150 million and an estimated annual salary of $10 million. He earned his net worth as the principal force behind the development of the Linux kernel.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.therichest.com&amp;#x2F;celebnetworth&amp;#x2F;celebrity-business&amp;#x2F;tech-millionaire&amp;#x2F;linus-torvalds-net-worth&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.therichest.com&amp;#x2F;celebnetworth&amp;#x2F;celebrity-business&amp;#x2F;...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sien</author><text>The problem is that the realistic alternative is that there is effectively even more centralized wealth, or wealth control with governments.&lt;p&gt;It would be neat if money was spread even more evenly. But the costs of the intervention to try and wangle it would probably outweigh the benefits.&lt;p&gt;That isn&amp;#x27;t to say that taxes shouldn&amp;#x27;t be higher or benefits higher. But even Sweden and France have billionaires. They just have their wealth in foundations and in Luxembourg.</text></comment>