Interview with Doug McIlroy

Over the years, I’ve had occasion to exchange email with Doug McIlroy. I always found Doug friendly and have long wanted to interview him.

When I finally got around to asking him, Doug anticipated that I would be interested in the role he played during the early years of UNIX and pointed me to a document he wrote in the late ’80s about the research versions of UNIX. The first 15 pages cover a lot of the early history of UNIX, from 1969 onward, and I really wish I had had this document when I was first researching UNIX in 1982. Doug answers a lot of questions I had then, as well as solving some mysteries that I’ve managed to hold on to.