Puffy (mascot)

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Puffy, the cartoon

Puffy is the mascot of the free operating system OpenBSD. Puffy is a pufferfish, which is used to signify the intention of the developers to make an impregnably secure operating system.

Puffy is also the mascot of the child projects of OpenBSD: OpenSSH, OpenNTPD, OpenCVS, OpenOSPFD and OpenBGPD. Puffy was selected because of the blowfish algorithm used in OpenSSH and the strongly defensive image of the porcupinefish, whose spikes help deter predators. He quickly became very popular, mainly because of the cute image of the fish and his distinction from the beastie used by FreeBSD, the horde of daemons then used by NetBSD and Tux, the Linux penguin. Although Puffy is usually said to be a pufferfish, in fact pufferfish do not possess spikes: images of Puffy are closer to a similar species, the porcupinefish.

Puffy is a popular motif on T-shirts and posters of the project, and also appearing in songs which are released along with the operating system. Puffy made his first public appearance in OpenBSD 2.6. Since his conception, each release has seen a different version of Puffy presented on t-shirts and posters. These include:

Puffy, painted

Doctor Puffystein - A genius doctor, fighting The Blob through reverse engineering
Puffiana Jones - famed hackologist and adventurer, seeking out the Lost RAID
Puffathy - a little Alberta girl, who must work with Taiwan to save the day
Pond-erosa Puff - a no-guff freedom fighter from the wild west, set to hang a lickin' on no-good bureaucratic nerds
Customer - a fish seeking to licence his free redundancy protocol, CARP
Sir Puffy of Ramsay - a freedom fighter who, with Little Bob of Beckley, took from the rich and gave to all
Puff the Barbarian - born in a tiny bowl, Puff was a slave, now he hacks through the C
James Pond, agent 077 - super spy and suave lady's man
Puffy, the Kitten Slayer - hunting down the evil script kitties
Puff Daddy - famed rapper and political icon
The Businessman - holding tight to his documents
Security Guards - keeping any eye out for the usual suspects
The SSHerif - lawman with his faithful steed Codey
a fish in an empty bowl, surround by fish bones and a cat
Pufferix and Bobilix delivering The Three Discs of Freedom