Happiness Quote by Linus Torvalds

A throwaway line that quietly redraws the borders of “pure” open source. Torvalds is praising “commercial Linux CD-ROM vendors,” then name-checking Red Hat, and the point isn’t the medium (the quaint CD-ROM) so much as the permission structure: people can make real money packaging Linux, and the sky doesn’t fall. In the 1990s, when Linux was still fighting for legitimacy, distribution was infrastructure. Getting a working system meant compiling, hunting dependencies, and praying your modem didn’t die. Vendors who could ship a tested stack on a disc weren’t parasites; they were accelerants.

The subtext is Torvalds’ signature pragmatism, bordering on deadpan. He’s not romantic about software freedom as an anti-market crusade. He’s signaling comfort with capitalism so long as the licensing bargain is honored: the code stays open, the improvements circulate, the ecosystem grows. “Very happy” reads as understated but strategic reassurance to a community prone to purity tests. If you want Linux to be more than a hobbyist talisman, you need distribution, support, documentation, and a phone number someone will answer.

Calling Torvalds a “businessman” misses the more interesting role he’s playing here: reluctant movement leader managing a coalition. This is coalition politics for nerds. Red Hat becomes a proof-of-concept that a commons can be commercially cultivated without being enclosed. The line works because it’s almost boring. That mundanity is the message: selling Linux isn’t betrayal; it’s how the thing wins.