Beloved mascots and icons of the open source movement, specifically Tux, the Linux Penguin, and Beastie, the BSD Devil, are coming under attack from parenting groups. Accusations of tobacco company-like advertising are flying at the open source community.
"Like Joe Camel, Tux the Penguin and Beastie are targeted specifically at children. The open source community has gotten away with this kind of 'hook 'em while they're young' advertising for years, and it's time that they have their day in court," says John Burkstrom, the attorney representing the class-action lawsuit that individual parents and parenting groups such as Mothers Intervening in the Compiling or Redistribution of Open-Source SOFTware (MICROSOFT) and Parents Opposed to Open Protocols and Standards (POOPS).
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MICROSOFT have released a list of signs that children are using dangerous software like OSS and BSD. Parents are advised to look for, among Tux and Beastie desktop backgrounds, tildes, forward slashes and larger electrical bills resulting from extremely long uptimes. Cases in which children are seen licking their monitors are cited as "dead giveaways" of the child using Apple's Mac OS X, which has a FreeBSD subsystem.
The open source community denies any connection to or inspiration from tobacco company advertising, though admits that cigarettes have played a vital part in many late night coding binges.
