The Digital Reformation is here. In Luther's Day, the Roman Catholic Church had a near-monopoly on the cultural, intellectual and spiritual life of Europe. Sixteenth-century Bibles were written in Latin, a language known only to the priesthood and a few other elites. Translations into more commonly spoken languages were rare. The church was on a roll.
Nobody likes to be exploited.
Whenever an abusive power elite monopolizes one of life's essentials and offers it at ever-greater expense, people eventually get around to weighing that price against the cost of producing it themselves. And whether that essential is salvation or operating system source code, when the scales tip, people will find a way. Martin Luther began his career as a simple Catholic priest living far from Rome. He would eventually challenge the entire range of church doctrine and papal authority, but his reformation began by questioning the idea that timely salvation could be brokered by the church in the form of indulgences. Linus Torvalds is an information-age reformer cut from the same cloth.