[GNU/FSF Press] GNU Project and Kerberos Developers Receive Prestigious USENIX Achievement Awards

[Bradley M. Kuhn]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Media Contact: Free Software Foundation
               Bradley M. Kuhn <address@hidden>
               Phone: +1-617-542-5942

Media Contact: USENIX
               Monica Ortiz <address@hidden>
               Phone: +1-415-990-5513

GNU Project and Kerberos Developers Receive Prestigious USENIX Achievement
Awards

Boston, MA, USA -- June 28, 2001 --- The USENIX Association today named
the GNU Project and its contributors as recipients of its prestigious
USENIX Lifetime Achievement Award.  The announcement was made just before
the keynote address at the USENIX Annual Technical Conference where the
developers of Kerberos were also awarded the Software Tools User Group
(STUG) award.

"The contributions of these two groups to the technical community have
been incredible.  The Lifetime Achievement and STUG awards are simply a
way for the technical community to thank them for the invaluable tools and
resources they have given us," said Andrew Hume, Vice President of the
USENIX Association.  "It's difficult to imagine how most of us could do
systems work without using GNU Project derived tools."

The GNU Project was started in 1984 by Richard M. Stallman, taking up the
challenge of developing a UNIX-like operating system that is completely
Free Software -- freely redistributable, and modifiable by all of its
users.  Today, the GNU system is widely used as part of the GNU/Linux
system.  GNU/Linux is the integrated combination of the GNU operating
system with the kernel, Linux, written by Linus Torvalds in 1991.  Now
that the core operating system is completed, the GNU Project continues to
develop user-space software for GNU/Linux users.

"Software freedom succeeds.  Without freedom, no one could have written
the many utilities and other applications in GNU/Linux," said Robert
J. Chassell, who accepted the award for the GNU Project.  "But freedom
needs to be defended; and the defense of freedom is expensive.  There are
those who want to limit what students may study, limit what programmers
may write, and limit what you and others may share or purchase.  We must
continue to preserve and advance freedom for users and programmers."

Kerberos was developed in much the same fashion as the GNU system.
Created by a team of contributors from Project Athena at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT), it was made freely available and has since
been incorporated into many operating system products, both commercial and
non-commercial.  Kerberos was the first widely deployed network
authentication system to assume that security risks were higher from
people inside a network rather than outside.  The Kerberos authentication
system uses cryptography to authenticate users to a server and exchanges
encryption keys that can be used to encrypt subsequent communication,
providing privacy and data integrity during the course of business.

"We made a decision very early on in the development of Kerberos to make
the source code freely available and to allow royalty free integration
with commercial and non-commercial systems," said Clifford Newman, who
accepted the award for the Kerberos contributors.  "This decision
contributed significantly to the success of Kerberos.  It's ironic that
most users of Kerberos don't even know they are using it."

The awards kicked off USENIX Annual Technical Conference, now in its 26th
consecutive year, included four best paper acknowledgments:

-- "Virtualizing I/O Devices on VMware Workstation's Hosted Virtual
Machine Monitor" by Jeremy Sugerman, Ganesh Venkitachalam, Beng-Hong Lim
-- "A Toolkit for User-level Filesystems" by David Mazieres -- "Nickle:
Language Principles and Pragmatics" by Bart Massey and Keith Packard --
"MEF: Malicious Email Filter" by Student Authors: Matthew G. Schultz and
Eleazar Eskin, together with Erez Zadok and Manasi Bhattacharyya

"This is a conference that selected 48 excellent papers out of 138
submissions.  Our program reflects the newest technology as well as the
luminaries in the industry," said Yoonho Park, USENIX 2001 Program Chair.
"Winning a best paper award amid such competition means your work is going
to move technology forward.  And that's what this conference is all
about."

The USENIX Annual Technical Conference continues in Boston, Massachusetts
from June 28 - 30, 2001.  Information about USENIX Awards and Recipients
is available online at www.usenix.org/directory/awards.html and
www.usenix.org/directory/stug.html.


About the USENIX Association

USENIX is the Advanced Computing Systems Association.  For over 25 years,
it has been the leading community for engineers, system administrators,
scientists, and technician working on the cutting edge of the computing
world.  USENIX conferences are the essential meeting grounds for the
presentation and discussion of technical advances in all aspects of
computing systems.  For more information about the USENIX Association,
visit http://www.usenix.org


About the Free Software Foundation:

The Free Software Foundation, founded in 1985, is dedicated to promoting
computer users' right to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute
computer programs.  The FSF promotes the development and use of free (as
in freedom) software---particularly the GNU operating system and its
GNU/Linux variants---and free documentation for free software.  The FSF
also helps to spread awareness of the ethical and political issues of
freedom in the use of software.  Their web site, located at
http://www.gnu.org, is an important source of information about GNU/Linux.
They are headquartered in Boston, MA, USA.