Fathers of Linux Revealed: Tooth Fairy & Santa Claus

An anonymous reader writes "The Alexis de Tocqueville Institute, which published the results of their very thorough investigation today, turned out to be right. Linus really isn't the father of the Linux operating system. After having been found out, Linus had no choice but to admit -- this is what he has to say: 'Ok, I admit it. I was just a front-man for the real fathers of Linux, the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus.'"

Comments

mod DOWN the duplicate post Posters

[dnotj]

This isn't a dupe, we don't read the articles anymore, now we don't even ready the Posting. Wake up people, this is Linus' rebuttal.

Article Text: LW Slashdotted already

LinuxWorld Exclusive: Linus Torvalds Makes Startling Admission, Discloses *Real* Fathers of Linux May 17, 2004 Summary As only Linus Torvalds can, the undisputed - except by the Alexis de Tocqueville Institute - inventor of Linux has as promised let LinuxWorld have his immediate comment on the AdTI's president's claims this morning that the parentage of Linux is in doubt. Read his startling admission exclusively here.

"Ok, I admit it. I was just a front-man for the real fathers of Linux, the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus."

Thus begins a characteristically Torvaldsian e-mail to LinuxWorld News Desk sent by Linus Torvalds in response to our invitation to comment on the sensationalist claims this morning that he isn't, after all, the inventor of Linux.

"They (for obvious reasons) couldn't step forward to admit that they had gotten bitten by the computer bug, and had been developing a series of operating systems on their own during the off season. But when they started with Linux (which they originally called Freax - they do feel like outsiders, you know, and that's a whole sad story in itself), they felt that they could no longer just let it languish in obscurity. They started to look for a front-man, and since Santa Claus is from Finland and thus has connections to Helsinki University, and the tooth fairy claimed 'He's got good strong teeth,' I got selected."

"Since then," Torvalds continues, "I've lived a life of subterfuge, always afraid that somebody would find out the truth. I'm actually relieved that it's over, and that the Alexis de Tocqueville Institute has finally uncovered the lie. I can now go back to my chosen profession, the exploration of the fascinating mating dance of the common newt."

In a PS he adds:

"Btw, did you know that newts have more offspring if you play the harmonica to them during their mating rituals? It's true."

And in a PPS:

Btw, I do believe that somebody took over adti.net.

I don't think the Alexis de Tocqueville institute ever had humor (they certainly used to take themselves very seriously), but their site today is filled with jokes.

Maybe they forgot to pay their DNS registration fee, and some enterprising person decided to play a joke on them? Or maybe their clocks are running a month-and-a-half late?

Or is it really unintentional?

Linus

Re:Stand-up.

[Zone-MR]

What do you mean it doesn't? The story is in the "It's funny, laugh" section.

Re:Dishonest list?

[Rostin]

Commonly "soft" and "hard" (or some other appropriate adjectives) atheism are distinguished from one another and from agnosticism.

Agnosticism: We are incapable of knowing whether or not God exists

"hard" atheism: God does not exist

"soft" atheism: There is insufficient evidence to believe in God, or belief in God is irrational.

Re:Linus key quote and hackers.

[csnydermvpsoft]

Database last updated 17-May-2004 19:14:38 EDT.

Uhh... that's the timestamp for the last update of the entire .net (and maybe .com too) database - which has obviously been very recent.

Re:Dishonest list?

[benploni]

Wrong. Linus qualifies as an atheist by his own words.

From an interview in the November 1999 Linux Journal magazine:

Margie: How about religion?
Linus: Hmmmm, completely a-religious -- atheist.

Re:Dishonest list?

[ornil]

I'd like to point out that gnostic is not the opposite of an agnostic (or vice versa, if you prefer). Gnostics (according to OED) are

The designation given to certain heretical sects among the early Christians who claimed to have superior knowledge of things spiritual, and interpreted the sacred writings by a mystic philosophy

I have never seen it used in the sense of opposite to "agnostic" and OED only saw it once a long time ago.

Re:Familiar pair for atheists.

[UserGoogol]

Larry Wall invented Perl. If that doesn't show the mind-twisting effect that religion can have on some people, I don't know what does.

Of course, Knuth is an absolutely wonderful computer scientist, so clearly religion goes either way.

Re:Famous scientist believers [Re:Familiar pair...

[benploni]

Lots of famous scientists were deeply religious. I never claimed otherwise. I merely expressed lack of surprise that Linus is not.

adti.net on freebsd

[MySt1k]

from a post in the Comments of the article,

amomynous commented ... Funny that for all their railing against FOSS software, www.adti.net is served from FreeBSD [netcraft]. http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph/?host=www.adti .net I would think for all their MS schilling, they would go with their own recommendations.

Who is the ADTI ?

[sfjoe]

I picked a couple of names at semi-random (names that seemed to be fairly uncommon) and did a Google search. Apparently, the requirements to be a "Teacher Choice Fellow" are not high. Google had zero results for both Don Koniezco and
Marilyn Ketter Rittmeyer.
Interesting.