Recently, we reported news that Linus Torvalds, the father of Linux, had began defending the trademark for Linux. Torvalds has written to 90 companies in Australia and asked them to relinquish legal claim to the name Linux, and has instructed the companies to purchase a license from the Linux Mark Institute. This move seems to have put Torvalds in the open-source spotlight, portraying him in a light that seems contrary to the free and open nature of the open-source movement. However, Torvalds has since been keen to make it clear that he is not profiting from the sublicensing of the Linux mark. He claims that in this case the legal costs exceed the license fees.
"Not only do I not get a cent of the trademark money, but even [the Linux Mark Institute] has so far historically always lost money on it," Torvalds said in a posting to the Linux Kernel Mailing List.