АнглийскийThere are a lot of people who likes animals in the world. And it looks like there is a high concentration of them among open source programmers. Mascots aren't something unusual and many companies and projects, even commercial ones, have something or someone lively symbolizing their brand. But I haven't seen so many animal mascots anywhere as there are in open source software.
Sure, everyone knows this guy:
It's Tux, the official brand character of the Linux kernel. However, it's not alone, as some other open source operating systems have sheltered an animal on their logos.
Pretty Roccy Racoon's muzzle greets users of MINIX 3:
GNU OS has phlegmatic but imposing GNU (antelope) head:
Not so warm-blooded but anyway friendly Geeko is a symbol of openSUSE Linux distribution
And OpenBSD prefers fish:
Xubunty Linux distribution, that runs on my old low-power laptop, uses lightweight Xfce desktop environment with nimble mouse Xue:
And this muzzle I see on the icon of GIMP, popular open-source graphic editor:
I'm not sure about current Pidgin messenger's popularity, but there was a time I used it along with ICQ:
But it seems to me that the most widely used animal in open source software world is a... Rabbit!
If you search in google the query "rabbit open source" you surely will find the RabbitMQ messaging framework. The rabbit on its logo seems to be drawn with a few pixels only, but it is undoubtedly a rabbit!
Nothing in the title of caching library Memcached tells about Leporidae family and even its logo is not so obvious:
But look on the whole picture and everything will become clear:
(Yes, it is a horror picture for some extent, I agree )
And again, there is an operating system with such mascot, though old and little-known one. Plan 9 from Bell Labs and the Plan 9 Bunny:
As I told earlier, I'm learning Data Science now. And there is one more "rabbit" library, the "awesome" Vowpal Wabbit. I don't know what the word «Vowpal» means, and why they have changed letter «R» to «W», but it is about a rabbit too, for sure:
Possibly, these are all significant examples, but it's obvious that rabbits are indeed popular in open source software. And I have no idea why. Maybe because they are cute and programmers lack tenderness? Or their sweethearts call them "my little bunny"? No, I don't have an exact answer.
As for me, I would prefer a hedgehog Ж>* (due to my personal traits). But it look like there is no such open source project. What's a pity