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From: aej@manyjars.WPI.EDU (Allan E Johannesen)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.misc
Subject: Re: why is a kermit?
Message-ID: <AEJ.90Nov28183232@manyjars.WPI.EDU>
Date: 28 Nov 90 23:32:32 GMT
References: <524@research.cc.flinders.oz>
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In-Reply-To: phata@research.cc.flinders.edu.au's message of 28 Nov 90 07:37:26 GMT
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On 28 Nov 90 07:37:26 GMT,
phata@research.cc.flinders.edu.au (Zax) said:
phata> Sender: phata@research.cc.flinders.oz

phata> did you ever get a question that was really simple and obvious
phata> but bloody near impossible to answer.  i just got one:

phata> 		"Why is kermit called kermit?"

I can't argue that the objective was to name the program kermit, but I
thought I had seen a distorted expansion of the word as an acronym
containing "KL Error Recovering ...".  We had a DEC20 (KL-20E) at the
time so maybe I imagined it.  Maybe it was somewhere in the commentary
inside the KL kermit source.  Kermit's syntax (e.g. command completion
on escape), even on pc or unix implementations, was reminiscent of
DEC20 commands, so I kind of figured that it was born in that
environment.

{ Probably for the same reasons people used to think the sun orbited
  around the earth... }