Beastie

What was the reason for choosing Beastie as Infonet mascot?

In the beginning of the 90s, when Infonet AS just started it’s activity, BSD/OS was the first operation system, installed to Infonet’s first server. Powered by BSD system, the server served us well for many years. At this moment we have dozens of servers with various operation systems, as well some of them are being runned under FreeBSD, in which  BSD/OS  has evolved. BSD/OS was our first system as well as BSD Daemon was doing a good job as an “guardian angel”. The copyright holder and creator of the daemon image is Marshall Kirk McKusick. We have contacted Marshall and he gave us the permission to use Beastie s a mascot of our Football Club. We hope that Beastie will become a great mascot and an outstanding guardian-angel for our club for many years.

Who is Beastie? (info from Wikipedia and FreeBSD site)

The little red fellow that graces many of these pages is the BSD Daemon. In the context of UNIX® systems, daemons are process that run in the background attending to various tasks without human intervention. In the general sense, daemon is an older form of the word demon. In the Unix System Administration Handbook, Evi Nemeth has this to say about daemons:

“Many people equate the word “daemon” with the word “demon,” implying some kind of Satanic connection between UNIX and the underworld. This is an egregious misunderstanding. “Daemon” is actually a much older form of “demon”; daemons have no particular bias towards good or evil, but rather serve to help define a person’s character or personality. The ancient Greeks’ concept of a “personal daemon” was similar to the modern concept of a “guardian angel” — “eudaemonia” is the state of being helped or protected by a kindly spirit. As a rule, UNIX systems seem to be infested with both daemons and demons.” (p403)

The BSD daemon‘s nickname Beastie is a slurred phonetic pronunciation of BSD.