+1 for this lovely metaphor. I'm Estonian, but I absolutely love Finns for their peculiar between-the-lines humor, and their tendency to go really deep into fringe stuff.
A Finnish guy once demonstrated a retro bicycle he was restoring, stating that it's going to take him two years to finish it. "This needs to be done properly," he said with a barely noticeable smirk.
Re: Finns, demoscene, and frugal computing: see also Viznut and his insightful essays: http://viznut.fi/en/
Actually, there were 3 of them. 1 running Apache and Perl FastCGI, one running MySQL, and a third which mostly ran backups, but could be used as failover for either the web server or database if required. I used to fly from Sydney to San Francisco 3 or 4 times a year with half a dozen hard drives in my carryon, because that was the most reliable way to do major upgrades - we had three identical boxes in the office in Sydney, and would install/configure/test major software and dependancy upgrades in house, then go to the data centre and swap in the new drives one machine at a time with zero downtime - usually. I was rarely the only one in my datacenter aisle with a screwdriver and a PAIX guy looking over my shoulder, but most other people were swapping out whole rack mount servers, not opening them up to replace or upgrade components.
32-33% margin after credit card fees. We were doing great, and totally full of ourselves. We turned down a buyout aisle we thought we were worth 10 or 20 times what they offered. Then Sept 11 happened and our revenue crashed 90% overnight. :sigh:
Edit: This also looks like a fairly Finnish thing to do. Thinking not only of Linux and hacking, but also their general demoscene culture and such things. See also: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2020-04-16-finland-re...