Tech mascots: where the penguin, the Octocat and the gopher came from
Linux has a penguin, GitHub has a cat with octopus arms, Go has a gopher, and Firefox is named after an animal that isn't in its logo. Each Question asks where a mascot came from, what it was first called, or why the joke stuck. The Explanations also cover licensing, because whoever owns a mascot decides who may draw it. For anyone who has seen these characters on stickers and wondered about them.
Questions
- Not answered. Linus Torvalds says a penguin once bit him. Where did it happen?
- Not answered. In May 1996, Linus Torvalds told the kernel mailing list what the Linux penguin should look like. What did he ask for?
- Not answered. Larry Ewing drew the penguin that became Tux. Which program did he use?
- Not answered. The first suggestion to call the penguin "Tux" explained the name as an acronym. The T stood for Torvalds. What did UX stand for?
- Not answered. Before GitHub renamed it, what was the Octocat called?
- Not answered. Why did a half-cat, half-octopus fit GitHub so well?
- Not answered. Simon Oxley, who drew the Octopuss, sold another stock illustration that became a famous tech logo. Which one?
- Not answered. "Firefox" is a common name for which animal?
- Not answered. Which names did the browser use before it became Mozilla Firefox in February 2004?
- Not answered. What was the Chrome offline dinosaur game's code name during development?
- Not answered. Which statements about the Chrome offline dinosaur are true?
- Not answered. Where did the Go gopher first appear, years before the Go language existed?
- Not answered. Which of these mascots has its creator dedicated to the public domain?
- Not answered. Go's brand guidelines treat the gopher differently from the word "Go" and the Go logo. What is the difference?
- Not answered. In what year did Sun Microsystems release the Duke images under the BSD licence?
- Not answered. Which mascots are matched with their true origin?