It has been a while since we last mentioned Dennis Byron, who appears to be having disinformation tantrums against Free software every now and then. Groklaw has already responded to his latest libelous attack, so we won't link to it directly and won't comment further.

Linux was created by IBM, HP (HPQ) and other former IT systems monopolists that realized that Microsoft was taking their systems monopoly away from them. IBM, HP, Digital Equipment (now part of HP), etc. had banded together for this purpose in the early 1980s while Linus Torvalds, the nominal creator of Linux and who now works for one of the groups IBM, HP, etc. put together for its trust-like purposes, was still in short pants. Ten years later, the consortium chose a small piece of software code, "forked" by Linus from some other code while he was in college, to complement the still ongoing technical development effort by IBM, HP, etc. to come up with "one Unix." What is today called Linux is the result of that one-Unix effort.

Isn't that hilarious? To be fair, those Wall Street dudes are likely under a lot of stress nowadays. If he needs a job, maybe he should write a column with "Paul Murphy", who also comes up with his own histories on the birth of Linux. I see a match. Or he could write for ADTI, methinks. They tried to allege that Linus forked Minix, but it's a lie. Anyway, Linus already confessed. The father of Linux is the Tooth Fairy.

We wrote on several occasions in the past about Microsoft's attempt to rewrite the history of Linux and encourage lawsuits against it in this way. There are some other more speculative examples. ⬆

“A couple of years ago this guy called Ken Brown wrote a book saying that Linus stole Linux from me... It later came out that Microsoft had paid him to do this...”

--Andrew S Tanenbaum, father on MINIX