Winelfred G. Pasamba wrote: > On Tue, Nov 10, 2009 at 9:38 PM, Alec Joseph Rivera <[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: > > Winelfred G. Pasamba wrote: > > just wait till he discovers how many daemons there are in his > system, hehe > > > > hope the non-satanic developers start renaming their software from > > 'daemons' to 'servers' like apache and postgresql > > > > > They have been retained that way lest we forget our roots... :-) > > > anyway what's the background history of naming servers that way? > It's funny, I've just blogged about this.. Quoting wikipedia:
The term was coined by the programmers of MIT's Project MAC <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MAC>. They took the name from Maxwell's demon <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_demon>, an imaginary being from a famous thought experiment that constantly works in the background, sorting molecules.^[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daemon_%28computer_software%29#cite_note-1> Unix <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix> systems inherited this terminology. Daemons <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daemon_%28mythology%29> are also characters in Greek mythology, some of whom handled tasks that the gods could not be bothered with. BSD <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Software_Distribution> and some of its derivatives have adopted a daemon as its mascot <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_Daemon>, although this mascot is actually a cute <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cute> variation of the demons <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon> which appear in Christian <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian> artwork. Majority of the terms and names of programs and utilities we use everyday on Linux have their own history and reflects the creativity and witty playfulness of hackers (or of those who are of the same mindset). > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _________________________________________________ > Philippine Linux Users' Group (PLUG) Mailing List > http://lists.linux.org.ph/mailman/listinfo/plug > Searchable Archives: http://archives.free.net.ph -- Follow me: http://twitter.com/agirivera <http://twitter.com/agirivera> Invite as a friend: http://www.facebook.com/agirivera <http://www.facebook.com/agirivera> _________________________________________________ Philippine Linux Users' Group (PLUG) Mailing List http://lists.linux.org.ph/mailman/listinfo/plug Searchable Archives: http://archives.free.net.ph
