ed. As ever, this merely highlights how much thinking modern day think tanks do
The Washington think tank responsible for 'Linux aids terrorism' claims two years ago is at it again. The Alexis de Tocqueville Institution is now casting doubt on Linus Torvalds' authorship of Linux, and implying that it's a knock-off of Unix.
ADTI's latest atrocity appears to be following the pattern of the previous, where highly-spun and contentious pre-publicity preceded the publication of a decidedly rickety report. This time we have only a press release headed "Torvalds claim to 'invent' Linux probably false, says new study," and the promise that the study itself will begin to emerge on 20 May, when it will take the form of a "series of excerpts" from a forthcoming book by AdTI president Kenneth Brown.
Microsoft confirmed that it provided funding to AdTI after the 'terror' study (also written by Brown), but it's entirely unclear why anyone at Beast Central might believe that this sort of thing helps. According to the release Brown, producing "one of the few and extensive critical studies on the source of open source code... traces the free software movement... from its romantic but questionable beginnings... [and] directly challenges Linus Torvalds' claim to be the inventor of Linux."
News source: The Register
