Your whole comment is insightful and makes sense, but what about the last sentence? It is an unrelated statement tacked on without any support or connection to the rest of the paragraph.

The parent comment was implying that Linus SHOULD be a billionaire because he was so successful. I'm saying that measuring success with net worth is not a good metric. How are we defining success? I think it is a pretty personal thing. Success is really a question of "did you meet your goals?" and "how far did you exceed them?" or "how close did you get?" Money can help you meet a lot of goals, but I don't see how it determines success.

We can even refine more. What is success to you? Total wealth? Leaving an impact on the world? Finding yourself? Being happy? Money definitely helps with all of these, but when you have the income we're talking about, how does it help you then? There are diminishing returns. The only version of success it substantially helps you with is if you measure success by wealth. And most people don't actually internalize that definition. So I personally do not feel like you can say Bezos is more successful than Gates. Or that Putin is more successful than either of them. Is Linus less any successful? You can't judge that without knowing what their goals are/were.