Dennis Ritchie, the father of the C programming language and one of the co-creators of Unix, shares his thoughts on the open source development model, Linux, and the legacy of Unix.
He invented the C programming language. He is one of the co-creators of Unix. He has watched more than one multi-billion dollar industry evolve around his creations. And still, Dennis Ritchie shows up for work each day in the same Murray Hill, NJ office where he and Ken Thompson first ran Unix on a Digital Equipment Corp. PDP-7 back in 1969. Why? Well, it’s not just any old company that employs Ritchie. This is Lucent’s Bell Labs we’re talking about - the home of the laser, the place where the transistor first saw life. It’s a pretty exciting work environment, and, as Ritchie is fond of saying, it’s nice to walk around your office and stumble into things like canisters of liquid helium. It was at his nondescript office, right next to where Unix was invented, that Ritchie met with Linux Magazine’s Robert McMillan and Adam Goodman.
Linux Magazine: Where do you think we are in the Unix life cycle?
Dennis Ritchie: Maybe the most amazing thing about the whole phenomenon is the fact that it has lived so long. A few years ago I was able to start pointing out that the lifetime of Unix is actually more than half the lifetime…
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