The question is not whether the author made a fortune, but whether they were upset that tremendous more value was captured by others. I’m sure Amazon has made way more money on AWS last year by leveraging Linux than Linus has in his entire life. Now the analogy is exactly 1-to-1 compatible: Amazon offers Linux as a service, Amazon offers MongoDB as a service. If you want another analogy: more value was captured by Github (and Microsoft) from Git than Linus. Again, from offering the software as a service.
It is fine to try to leverage the properties of open source to make profits, just don’t be surprised when it doesn’t, on its own, do so. That is what is meant by my first statement: “open source will absolutely help you gain traction, it will not necessarily help you capture value”. As such, if you use open source, the goal best served is gaining users. Don’t be surprised when it doesn’t make you a ton of money.
It is fine to try to leverage the properties of open source to make profits, just don’t be surprised when it doesn’t, on its own, do so. That is what is meant by my first statement: “open source will absolutely help you gain traction, it will not necessarily help you capture value”. As such, if you use open source, the goal best served is gaining users. Don’t be surprised when it doesn’t make you a ton of money.