BSD Daemon

The BSD daemon, nicknamed Beastie, is the generic mascot of BSD operating systems.

Overview

The BSD daemon is named after software daemons, a class of long-running computer programs in Unix-like operating systems, which through a play on words takes the cartoon shape of a mythical demon. The BSD daemon's nickname Beastie is a slurred phonetic pronunciation of BSD. Beastie customarily carries a trident to symbolize a software daemon's forking of processes. The FreeBSD web site has noted Evi Nemeth's 1988 remarks about cultural-historical daemons in the Unix System Administration Handbook: "The ancient Greeks' concept of a 'personal daemon' was similar to the modern concept of a 'guardian angel' ...As a rule, UNIX systems seem to be infested with both daemons and demons."

Copyright

The copyright of the official BSD daemon images is held by Marshall Kirk McKusick (a very early BSD developer who worked with Bill Joy). He has freely licensed the mascot for individual "personal use within the bounds of good taste (an example of bad taste was a picture of the BSD daemon blowtorching a Solaris logo)." Any use requires both a copyright notice and attribution.