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Dennis Ritchie Interviewed

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the r-in-k-&-r dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Unix.se has published an interview with Dennis Ritchie (inventor of C, co-creator of Unix)." Not very technical, but Dennis shares his thoughts on GNU, kernel design, and more.

3 of 356 comments (clear)

  1. From the article... by GreyWolf3000 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Any thoughts about the GNU project? How did you first learn about it?

    Dennis Ritchie: I can't remember when I first learned about it, but a long time ago. The True-GNU philosophy is more extreme than I care for, but it certainly laid a foundation for the current scene, as well as providing real software. The interesting thing is the way that free-software ideas have begun to influence major existing commercial players.

    Interesting how modern day critics claim the gnu project to be too political, and try to rephrase free software rhetoric to be more palatable (sic) for business and those of a less "leftist" mindset, and he has the same beliefs, but for such a different reason: he existed before computing and software were touched by politics. He was co-developing UNIX before printer companies decided to have software contractors signing NDAs and closing off the specs, or vendor lock-ins.

    --
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  2. By the way ... by GreatOgre · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Has anybody else taken a look at his other lives?

    I was laughing when I read the one in Brazil.

  3. Why do the fathers of UNIX dislike Linux so much? by irexe · · Score: 5, Interesting
    ..take a look at this quote from a 1999 interview with Ken Thompson:
    Thompson: I view Linux as something that's not Microsoft--a backlash against Microsoft, no more and no less. I don't think it will be very successful in the long run. I've looked at the source and there are pieces that are good and pieces that are not. A whole bunch of random people have contributed to this source, and the quality varies drastically. My experience and some of my friends' experience is that Linux is quite unreliable. Microsoft is really unreliable but Linux is worse. In a non-PC environment, it just won't hold up. If you're using it on a single box, that's one thing. But if you want to use Linux in firewalls, gateways, embedded systems, and so on, it has a long way to go.

    It does make you curious as to what the exact arguments of these people against Linux are. Especially since Linux has become such a fine platform for desktop environments (KDE, Gnome) nowadays. In most people's experience, Linux has been more reliable on the desktop as well as the server for quite some time.