"Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more lovable!"

Fri, 31 Jan 1997
Linus Torvalds, considered the "Father of the LINUX Operating System", has been selected by the UniForum Board of Directors to receive The UniForum Award. The Award will be presented to Torvalds on Thursday, March 13th, as part of the morning Keynote Session at UniForum '97, being held at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco.

The UniForum Award, presented annually since 1983, goes to individuals or groups whose work has significantly advanced the cause of open systems over time, or has had an immediate and positive impact on the industry with long term ramifications. The UniForum Board of Directors considered a number of nominees for this year's awards, and voted unanimously in their selection of Linus Torvalds for his breakthrough work on the LINUX kernel and for his pioneering efforts in making his work available at little or no cost to anyone wishing to develop on it.

Linus Torvalds is the creator and chief architect of the Linux operating system. At the University of Helsinki in the spring of 1991, frustrated with the price of Unix operating systems, Torvalds began writing some software code to handle certain computing chores on the 386. "I noticed that this was starting to be an operating system," he says. Since then, he has traveled all over the world promoting Linux. Although developing Linux has been almost a full-time job for him, he recently accepted a job at Transmeta in Santa Clara, California. He and Tovi Monni recently celebrated the birth of their baby daughter, Patricia Miranda Torvalds.

The UniForum Board also selected a second Award winner this year: James Gosling of JavaSoft, and his development team, for their work on Java. Gosling will receive his Award at the Wednesday, March 12th Keynote session at UniForum '97.

The Award presentation to Linus Torvalds, at the Thursday Keynote session, is open to all free of charge but requires attendees to register for UniForum '97. Registrants may also visit the exhibits floor which features booths from a number of LINUX vendors including Comtrol, LINUX International; SSC, publishers of Linux Journal; Red Hat Software and Work Group Solutions. To view the entire UniForum '97 Conference and Trade Show brochure, and to register on-line, please go to http://www.uniforum97.com/.

For additional information contact:
Richard Shippee, Director of Communications, UniForum 408-986-8840, ext 17, dick@uniforum.org