Andrew Tanenbaum: Operating systems' Mr Reliable

How do you react when you hear the word Samizdat? And are you over that whole Ken Brown affair?

It never bothered me at all. I couldn't figure out what the heck Brown was after when he came to visit me. Now I realize he was trying to trick me into claiming Linus stole Linux from me. But I kept telling him that Linus would probably never had written Linux if he hadn't studied MINIX and my book carefully, and he used MINIX as his development platform and a lot more. But the Linux code was all his own. It wasn't stolen.

Apart from writing text books, you mainly work with your Ph.D. students on their final research projects. Is there anything out-of-this-world that we should be keeping an eye out for?

I'm doing a lot of work on security these days. One of my students. Melanie Rieback, has won two best paper awards this year and got us on the front page of the New York Times Website, CNN, BBC, and a couple of hundred other media outlets for her work on RFID security. See www.rfidvirus.org and www.rfidguardian.org.

You describe Amsterdam as a "pleasant, peaceful city, not too big, not too small, just right. I like the weather--dull gray and drizzly most of the year. Great weather for being indoors with a warm computer." So, will you be unhappy in the sunny, hot, Sydney summer?

I've been to Oz before. The Aussies make up for the weather. They're great.

Andy Tanenbaum will present his keynote speech on Wednesday, January 17, 2007. For more information, go to http://lca2007.linux.org.au/