Re:Why to Start a Startup in a Bad Economy
by helveticaman on Tuesday October 21, 2008 @10:29AM
(#338931)
>Neither Stallman nor Torvalds are scrambling to pay rent.
I've heard rumors that Torvalds wishes he had the money Jobs and Gates have. So, yeah, a little unhappy.
>And besides that, lightning has to strike the same place 200 times before you make it to the 99.9th percentile.
That's if you're in a bell-curve. If you're in a zipf-distribution, lightning only has to strike once.
So it depends if you want to be "well off" (Stallman), "obscenely rich" (Torvalds), "shockingly rich" (Jobs), or "embarassingly rich" (Gates).
And I think that most would, given the choice, rather be the BDFL of a project they obviously enjoy (Torvalds), than spend all day in meetings, or managing management, or whatever Gates has done for the last decade. Unless you're a masochist, or a megalomaniac.
And besides that, lightning has to strike the same place 200 times before you make it to the 99.9th percentile.
"I'm trying to make a living; if you're trying to make a killing then you're stuck in the system."