“The Linux folks have their penguin and the BSDers their demon.
Perl’s got a camel, FSF fans have their gnu and OSI’s got an
open-source logo. What we haven’t had, historically, is an emblem
that represents the entire hacker community of which all these
groups are parts. This is a proposal that we adopt one–the glider
pattern from the Game of Life.“About half the hackers this idea was alpha-tested on
instantaneously said ‘Wow! Cool!’ without needing any further
explanation. If you don’t know what a glider is, or why it would
make a good emblem, or if you’re dubious about having an emblem at
all, read the FAQs page…”