The Unix philosophy, originated by Ken Thompson, is a set of cultural norms and philosophical approaches to minimalist, modular software development. It is based on the experience of leading developers of the Unix operating system. Early Unix developers were important in bringing the concepts of modularity and reusability into software engineering practice, spawning a "software tools" movement. Over time, the leading developers of Unix established a set of cultural norms for developing software; these norms became as important and influential as the technology of Unix itself, and have been termed the "Unix philosophy."
Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie, key proponents of the Unix philosophy
Rob Pike, co-author of The UNIX Programming Environment
Brian Kernighan has written at length about the Unix philosophy
Doug McIlroy (left) with Dennis Ritchie
Unix is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and others.
Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie, principal developers of Research Unix
Photo from USENIX 1984, including Dennis Ritchie (center)
Promotional license plate by Digital Equipment Corporation, actual license plate is used by Jon Hall
HP 9000 workstation running HP-UX, a certified Unix operating system