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[Gary W. Swearingen]

des at des.no (Dag-Erling Smørgrav) writes:

> underway at comcast.net (Gary W. Swearingen) writes:
>> (1) AFAIK, the mascot was first published with some "4.2 BSD"
>> documentation in 1982 or 1983.
>
> Wrong.  Here's Phil Foglio's original, from 1976:

I will quibble with that, but thanks for providing evidence for the
essential point: the use of demon images in association with UNIX came
before, or at least independent of, the acronym "BSD", so it
originally had nothing to do with the word "beastie".  (I will still
wonder whether "BSD/Beastie" had something to do with the UNIX mascot
becoming associated only (?) with BSD, but that's a different issue.)

The quibble: If we are to believe
http://www.freebsd.org/copyright/daemon.html, the earliest BSD daemon
images were created by Lasseter and copyrighted by McKusick;
AFAI(still)K, they were first published in 1982-3.  Foglio's image
(copyrighted by USENIX) shows several demons which would be UNIX (or
USENIX) demon mascots.  Note that the demons have cloven hoofs and
sharp teeth.  Foglio's design was used as late as 1991 in a generic
(non-BSD-specific) UNIX/USENIX context.

But I would rather not believe freebsd.org, and from your comment
above, it seems that you don't believe it either.  Nobody may speak
officially for BSD and, practically, any reasonable daemon image would
be considered a BSD daemon (or UNIX daemon, in a UNIX context).  (Old
European art is full of demons to copy or derive from.)  And some will
choose to use multiple demons (presumably not all named "Beastie").