"The tao of MOOOO" by stoyan

Fri, 15 Sep 2006 00:11:00 PDT

Just a copy from my old blog . I’m not using it anymore, but don’t want to lose this post:

I ‘saw’ several times people to welcome each other in #netbsd with ‘mooooooooooooo’. I wanted to know why? What is the meaning? What is relation between the cows and BSD? The answer from gilbert fernandes follows (thanks a lot for this, gilb):

11:08 < gilb> it all started on openbsd with monkeys
11:08 < gilb> monkeys is another name for some breed of hackers
11:08 < gilb> like dug song
11:08 < gilb> people that develop tools aimed at security/hacking and so on
11:08 < gilb> so for fun, people on openbsd started creating a bestiary
11:08 < gilb> the monkey is the advanced user of openbsd
11:09 < gilb> it’s not only a developer but someone that’s able to write programs to
                     enhance use of openbsd
11:09 < gilb> like dsniff for example ;)
11:09 < gilb> but the monkeys usually write programs fast and spread them,
                     it’s not always cute code
11:09 < gilb> there is an other breed: the cows
11:09 < gilb> the cows do things slowly but with care
11:09 < gilb> they chew code like real life cows chew grass
11:10 < gilb> code is written, written again and again, and has to pass all checks and so on
11:10 < gilb> cows are also considerated as meditative users
11:10 < gilb> they spend a lot of time reading and fixing code, porting code, writing docs :)
11:10 < gilb> the cows take things slowly to get farther
11:11 < gilb> while monkeys choose a target and fulfill it
11:11 < gilb> thus the cow has a wider scope and aims. that’s the tao of the cow
11:11 < gilb> then we got the weasels
11:11 < gilb> and dragons
11:11 < gilb> dragons = senior developer
11:12 < gilb> a weasel is an admin
11:12 < gilb> an openbsd admin is a weasel
11:12 < gilb> expert is making sure a server is up all the time, day and night
11:12 < gilb> the dragons are the keepers of thy code
11:12 < gilb> their lair contains a lot of ancient and rare machines
11:12 < gilb> and their pride is porting bsd code to those machines
11:12 < gilb> like VAX, old IBM servers and so on
11:13 < gilb> and they protect that lair like dragons protect their gold
11:13 < gilb> they are also called dragons because they usually burn people down in FLAMES
11:13 < gilb> :>
11:13 < gilb> like: “get a life, move away from BSD and don’t write on our mailing-list ever.
                     even if you reincarnate.”
11:13 < gilb> well.. you know what a flame is :)
11:14 < gilb> the bestiary is just geek talk
11:15 < gilb> the newbies do not exist in the bestiary
11:15 < gilb> they are in the void
11:15 < gilb> casted into null pointers
11:15 < gilb> :)
11:15 < gilb> a cow is like a buddha-wanabee
11:16 < gilb> the tao of the cow explains there is no beginning
11:16 < gilb> it’s just a cycle
11:16 < gilb> the cow or monkeys end up being dragons someday, sometimes they don’t
11:16 < gilb> where all begin and ends: it doesn’t matter where you start and where you go
11:17 < gilb> what matters is what you are, and what the tao tells you : what you could become
11:17 < gilb> in fact, we are all already dragons wanabees
11:17 < gilb> we just need to find ourselves, though work and learning
11:17 < gilb> learning programming, unix lore, source code, hacking..
11:18 < gilb> and someday people all around see you shine differently and ask you for guidance

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"The tao of MOOOO" by stoyan