The below link has more info from MINIX author Tanenbaum. But in particular I enjoyed the below snip which makes the case that HP actually may own the IP for Windows2000/XP and that it is far easier to prove this true than that Linus stole Linux from Minix & Tanenbaum.

[link|http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/brown/rebuttal/|http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/brown/rebuttal/]

EXTRACT >>>
A Brief History of Windows NT/2000/XP
Does Microsoft own Windows? Maybe HP does. Some history may be in order here. Windows 3.1, 95, 98, and ME were basically glorified shells running on top of 16-bit MS-DOS (which Microsoft didn't write, but bought from a company called Seattle Computer Products). In the 1980s, Microsoft realized that it would some day need a true 32-bit operating system. At about this time, David Cutler, one of the principal architects of the operating system for the DEC VAX, VMS, had just moved to Seattle to set up a development center to produce the successor to VMS. When top executives at DEC killed his project in 1988, Cutler decided to leave DEC and was quickly hired by nearby Microsoft to lead the team that produced Windows NT. Cutler took some of his key people with him. This was definitely a coup for Microsoft. Operating system designers of Cutler's quality are few and far between.

To make a long story short, Cutler and his team succeeded and the result was Windows NT. When the Windows 98 user interface was added and some small improvements made, it was renamed Windows 2000. A slightly modified version is now sold as Windows XP.

Not surprisingly, WNT looked a lot like VMS (just add one to each of the letters). After all, the same person was the chief architect of both of them. When a talented designer writes a 32-bit operating system and a few years later writes another 32-bit operating system, it is possible they might have some serious resemblances. I don't know if any code is the same. For details, see an article by Mark Russinovich. When DEC learned about WNT, they had some discussions with Microsoft and something in excess of $60 million was transferred from Redmond to Maynard to solve the problem. The case never went to court (probably because Microsoft wanted to get WNT out the door quickly and not get bogged down in years of litigation, even if they thought they would win). A few years later, DEC sued Intel for allegedly violating DEC's patents on the Alpha chip, although the case was settled out of court. By 1990, however, it was clear to everyone that the minicomputer era was over, despite the remark by DEC's president, Ken Olsen, "Nobody needs a computer in their [sic] house." By the mid 1990s, DEC may have been grasping at straws, threatening everyone in sight, just to survive. It didn't work and in 1998 DEC was bought by Compaq, which in turn was bought by Hewlett-Packard, which now owns the rights to VMS.

If Microsoft could not make sure its star programmer, who was known to have done similar work for a competing company, did not misuse some IP, how can they or any company make sure its thousands of programmers don't do something they shouldn't do? It is impossible. The problem of programmers misusing code is real but the problem is not unique to free software. And how can any company make sure its researchers, engineers, and other employees do not use techniques or processes patented by its competitors. It can't be done. But to say the problem of theft of IP is somehow greater for free software than for commercial software is completely unproven.

"He says Linus couldn't possibly have written that much code," said Tanenbaum. "But there's tremendous variation from programmer to programmer-- some research I saw says maybe as high as 30 to 1 for great programmers and poor ones -- and Linus could easily be in the top 10 percent or top 1 percent of all programmers.
--Lisa Stapleton, Linux Insider, May 21, 2004"

This quote is taken out of context. In it "that much code" refers to the current Linux operating system. Nobody has ever claimed Linus wrote every line of code in the current distribution." My point was that a decent programmer could easily have written the 10,000 lines of code in Linux 0.01 in a year.

"AdTI and Tanenbaum do agree on one point: the Linux kernel is an incredible, but conspicuous accomplishment."

Actually, we don't agree on this. I wasn't all that impressed with the monolithic design of Linux 0.01. I think I have made that point a couple of times already.
<<<<

Doug M