Success Quote by Linus Torvalds

“I do get my pizzas paid for by Linux indirectly” lands because it’s a sly, almost throwaway correction to the myth of the monk-like coder building the modern world for pure altruism. Torvalds isn’t confessing greed; he’s puncturing a sentimental story people like to tell about open-source: that it floats above money, ambition, and the normal incentives that shape everything else. The joke works precisely because it’s small. Not “I got rich,” not “I sold out,” just pizza - the most programmer-coded currency imaginable, humble enough to sound harmless while still making the point: value gets monetized, even when the product is “free.”

The intent is classic Torvalds: pragmatic, faintly irritated by ideology, and delivered with deadpan understatement. “Indirectly” is doing heavy lifting. He didn’t charge users for Linux; he built a reputation, an ecosystem of trust, and a marketable authority that later translated into a salary, speaking fees, influence, and a career with corporate backing. That word also defuses the usual culture-war trap: he can acknowledge economic reality without handing ammunition to critics who claim open source is a scam, or to purists who treat money as contamination.

Context matters: Linux became infrastructure. When your volunteer-ish project ends up running servers, phones, and the cloud, the romance of the garage gives way to institutions. Torvalds’s line is a reminder that the real story of open source isn’t sainthood; it’s a new way of routing compensation - through prestige, patronage, and platforms rather than a checkout page.