UniForum Bestows Annual Awards
The highest award UniForum presents is The UniForum Achievement Award which will be presented to two richly deserving recipients at UniForum '97.
The UniForum Achievement Award recognizes accomplishments in the field of open systems that have either contributed significantly to the advancement of the industry over time; or which are of such importance that their impact is immediately and positively felt, likely with long term ramifications.
The Award is voted on by the UniForum Board of Directors from nominees brought to its attention over the year. The Award does not have to be presented every year. Past winners of the Award, such as Jim Bell of Hewlett-Packard and Dennis Ritchie of AT&T are people whose contributions have been of vital importance in the areas of research and development, industry collaboration, product introduction and the media. The two winners this year are being honored for their work on distinctly different projects, each of which has won enormous world-wide acclaim.
And the winners are:
James Gosling, Vice president at SunSoft and a Sun Fellow, is the leader of the Java development team. He managed the critical work that created the Java language at Sun and is the lead engineer at JavaSoft for the Java/Hot Java system. The impact of his work is hard to calculate. Even in an industry attuned to technology breakthroughs, the emergence and growth of Java is stunning. The UniForum Achievement Award will be presented to Mr. Gosling by past award winner, Mike Azzara, Publisher of Communications Week. The award ceremony will be during the Wednesday, March 12th, UniForum '97 Opening Keynote Session at 9 am in the Moscone Convention Center, San Francisco.
Linus Torvalds, of Transmeta Corp, Santa Clara, Calif., is the "Father of the LINUX Operating System". The award celebrates his efforts in creating the LINUX kernel and his pioneering efforts in making his work available at little or no cost to those who wish to develop on it. The results to date have been the creation of new companies and products that are using LINUX to bring added value to applications for the enterprise; and a new appreciation for the power of a truly open system. The UniForum Achievement Award will be presented to Mr. Torvalds by past award winner, Doug Michels, Co-founder and Chief Technical Officer of SCO. The award ceremony will be during the Thursday, March 13th, UniForum '97 Keynote Session at 9 am in the Moscone Convention Center, San Francisco.
