Andrew Tanenbaum has been announced as the recipient of the prestigious ACM software system award, presented annually by the ACM – the leading international organization in the field of computer systems. Tanenbaum was recognized for his creation of the operating system Minix, which has been instrumental in training numerous generations of students in operating system development principles and has significantly influenced the evolution of mainstream operating systems, including Linux.
Minix OS is distinguished by its micro-kernel architecture, with a nucleus-level code consisting of only a few thousand lines while the remaining functions operate at the user level. The system’s foundational software environment incorporates a multitude of utilities typical for BSD systems and libraries ported from NetBSD. Additionally, the Minix repository features approximately 700 packages encompassing various applications. The original source code of Minix is distributed under a BSD-like license, making it an appealing option for companies wary of the strict conditions of the GPL. Notably, Minix is utilized in the firmware of the Intel Management Engine, present in modern PCs and laptops with Intel processors, positioning Minix as one of the most widely used OS in existence.
The ACM Software System Award is bestowed annually to recognize the development of software systems that have a transformative impact on the industry, introducing new concepts or exploring previously untapped commercial applications. The award carries a prize of 35 thousand US dollars. Past recipients of the ACM award include projects such as GCC and LLVM, and their creators Richard Stallman and Chris Latner. The accolade has also been awarded to significant projects such as UNIX, Java, Apache, Mosaic, WWW, Smalltalk, PostScript, Tex, TCL/TK, RPC, Make, DNS, AFS, EIFFEL, VMWARE, Wireshark, Jupyter Notebooks, Berkeley DB, SEL4, and Eclipse.