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Re: GCC Logo
- From: Colin Douglas Howell <chowell2 at pacbell dot net>
- To: starman at pd dot jaring dot my
- Cc: gcc at gnu dot org
- Date: Sat, 15 Jun 2002 11:28:55 -0700
- Subject: Re: GCC Logo
Dear Sirs
I like "new look" of your logo but...your cow (or bull?) looks rather
undernourished, genetically underpriviliged (er the horns), humble, hopeful
and looking for a handout. Whether you believe in "feng shui" or Chinese
Geomancy - I may suggest that you adopt a more aggressive, stronger,
optimistic bull as your mascot. We need a more positive forward looking
leadership oriented bull.
Just my opinion. No offense meant.
P/S I am trying to switch to Linux and am still finding my way around.
Regards
Heh. As David Miller already replied, the mascot is a gnu, not a bull.
A gnu, also called a wildebeest, is a really weird-looking antelope that
lives in southern and eastern Africa. But your description sounds like a
pretty accurate characterization of how these animals look. It gave me a
chuckle. :-)
(By the way, though gnus look humble, they are also extremely numerous, so they
must be doing something right. Seems like a good omen for a mascot.)
For some pictures of these animals and information on them, try the following
Google searches:
http://images.google.com/images?num=100&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF8&oe=UTF8&q=wildebeest+gnu&sa=N&tab=wi
http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF8&oe=UTF8&q=wildebeest+gnu
As for why the GNU project chose to name itself after such an animal, Richard
Stallman writes:
'I chose to make the system compatible with Unix so that it would be portable,
and so that Unix users could easily switch to it. The name GNU was chosen
following a hacker tradition, as a recursive acronym for "GNU's Not Unix."'
The following page has a more detailed history of the GNU project:
http://www.gnu.org/gnu/thegnuproject.html