You can’t buy Linux. It’s free. Always has been. So IBM did the next best thing: it spent $34 billion buying Red Hat, a company whose entire business is selling tech support for this free software. Largest software acquisition in history. For support contracts on something anyone can download for $0.
The “side project” story, while true, is maybe 5% of what actually happened since.
Linux itself is managed by a nonprofit, the Linux Foundation. That nonprofit pulled in $311 million last year. Only $8.4 million of that (2.6%) actually went to Linux itself. The rest of the funds support ~1,500 other open source projects, events, and training. Every Fortune 100 tech company is a paying member.
And here’s who actually builds this “free” software now: 84% of the code changes to Linux in 2025 come from developers on corporate payroll. Intel is the biggest contributor. Google is second. Huawei, Oracle, AMD, and Meta all have engineers writing Linux code full-time. Over 1,780 companies pay people to work on it. The solo genius in a dorm room stopped being the real story around 1998.
The wildest part: over 65% of Microsoft’s cloud computers run Linux. Microsoft, the company whose former CEO once called Linux “a cancer,” now runs more Linux than Windows on its own servers. Amazon and Google’s clouds are even higher, both above 90%.
A 2024 Harvard Business School study attempted to calculate how much companies would spend if all free, open-source software vanished tomorrow. The answer: $8.8 trillion more per year. 3.5x what they currently spend. And that number didn’t even include operating systems like Linux.
Linus Torvalds still personally approves every major code change. He makes about $1.5 million a year. He also built Git, the tool that powers GitHub (which Microsoft bought for $7.5 billion). Two pieces of software the entire tech industry runs on, same guy.
Linux started as 10,239 lines of code. It’s now over 40 million. Every one of the world’s 500 fastest supercomputers runs it. 96% of the top million websites sit on it. Every Android phone has Linux inside it. That’s roughly 3 billion devices in people’s pockets.
It’s the largest collaborative engineering project in human history, free to use, funded by the same corporations it was supposed to replace.
Mahavatar Narsimha is set to become the first Indian animated film to enter the 100 crore club.
How? The animation is impressive for a budget of just 40 crores, but the main reason is the extraordinary word-of-mouth and, after numerous failed attempts in Indian cinema, the fact that it’s a Veda-accurate movie.
It’s a perfect example of how, if your work is truly good, word-of-mouth can take it to unimaginable heights, even if you’re starting small.
How many of you Supported Sharmistha.
Follow me . Retweet & Write #ReleaseSharmistha or Jai Hind
I will follow back all. & appreciate 🙌👌
You are the right voice . Let’s work together. Follow each other to make strong Hindu Voice . No another Sharmistha.
@JaipurDialogues प्रीतमपुरा की ये छोरी खुद macdonald मै burger खा के खुद को अमेरिकन समाज रही है
Wokeism is a Cancer that comes from West
These are just by product of fake dollar
@MudrikaKavdia You will eventually become emotionally weak if you are in that condition
It's open ground for depression.
He just need emotional support
I felt that impact really
Bit depending on someone emotionally comes with a cost
Of late, few complaints raised by amazon gift card users have been brought to my attention. It is indeed concerning to realise that the expired gift card balance of amazon users would be lost into dormant accounts. Even my office experienced this issue of lost balances from expired gift cards. The hard-earned money of many users remains tied up and ultimately vanishes without any recourse.
Over 295 million Indians actively use e-commerce platforms, with 1 billion+ gift cards purchased on Amazon India alone.
As per RBI guidelines on Prepaid Payment Instruments, all PPIs must have a minimum validity of one year. If inactive for a year, the account should be deactivated only after prior notice, with the balance refunded to the source or transferred to a KYC-linked bank account.
I urge platforms to ensure transparency and fairness to protect consumers from unnecessary losses.
@AmazonHelp@amazon@amazon
https://t.co/NUiYNjivFS
@RBI@FinMinIndia@nsitharamanoffc