"You won't get sued for anticompetitive behavior"
About this Quote
Coming from Linus Torvalds, that line lands like a deadpan wink from the guy who accidentally turned “giving your work away” into one of the most successful industrial strategies of the internet age. “You won’t get sued for anticompetitive behavior” isn’t advice so much as a skewering of how competition law tends to police the winners, not the weirdos: the more you look like a traditional firm consolidating power, the more legal oxygen you burn; the more you look like a loose, volunteer-ish ecosystem shipping code, the harder it is to pin a cartel label on you.
The specific intent is pragmatic and slightly mischievous. Torvalds is pointing at a structural advantage of open-source development: when the product is licensed to be forked, copied, and redistributed, it’s difficult to argue you’re “closing” a market. Even if Linux and its surrounding stack become dominant infrastructure, the openness functions as legal and moral insulation. You can’t easily accuse a system of monopoly behavior when its core premise is permissionless access.
The subtext is sharper: the tech world loves to talk about “community” and “innovation,” but the real trump card is often liability. Openness isn’t just ideology; it’s a posture that changes what regulators can credibly claim. Torvalds, famously allergic to sanctimony, strips away the heroic narrative and leaves the cold mechanics behind: build something everyone can use, and you don’t just win adoption - you also dodge one of the most expensive forms of scrutiny.
The specific intent is pragmatic and slightly mischievous. Torvalds is pointing at a structural advantage of open-source development: when the product is licensed to be forked, copied, and redistributed, it’s difficult to argue you’re “closing” a market. Even if Linux and its surrounding stack become dominant infrastructure, the openness functions as legal and moral insulation. You can’t easily accuse a system of monopoly behavior when its core premise is permissionless access.
The subtext is sharper: the tech world loves to talk about “community” and “innovation,” but the real trump card is often liability. Openness isn’t just ideology; it’s a posture that changes what regulators can credibly claim. Torvalds, famously allergic to sanctimony, strips away the heroic narrative and leaves the cold mechanics behind: build something everyone can use, and you don’t just win adoption - you also dodge one of the most expensive forms of scrutiny.
Quote Details
| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
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