According to a controversial report (which btw hasn't even been officially published), it would be near to impossible to say that Linus Torvalds created the now extremely popular Linux operating system from scratch... the study boldly hints that Torvalds based his work on Minix, a small operating system that is very similar to UNIX: "MINIX was written for educational purposes by Prof. Andrew S. Tanenbaum of Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam." Torvalds denies such claims.

The 92-page report, from a 14-person Washington, D.C., think tank called the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, suggests more Linux credit should go to Minix. A Unix clone, Minix that was designed by Andrew Tanenbaum at Vrije University in Amsterdam for the study of operating systems and software, which Torvalds used before he embarked on Linux development in 1991.