from
Jargon File (4.4.4, 14 Aug 2003)
Eric Conspiracy
n.
A shadowy group of mustachioed hackers named Eric first pinpointed as
a sinister conspiracy by an infamous talk.bizarre posting ca. 1987;
this was doubtless influenced by the numerous `Eric' jokes in the
Monty Python oeuvre. There do indeed seem to be considerably more
mustachioed Erics in hackerdom than the frequency of these three
traits can account for unless they are correlated in some arcane way.
Well-known examples include Eric Allman (he of the `Allman style'
described under {indent style}) and Erik Fair (co-author of NNTP);
your editor has heard from more than a hundred others by email, and
the organization line `Eric Conspiracy Secret Laboratories' now
emanates regularly from more than one site. See the Eric Conspiracy
Web Page at http://www.catb.org/~esr/ecsl/ for full details.
from
The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (8 July 2008)
Eric Conspiracy
<person, humour> A shadowy group of moustachioed hackers named
Eric first pinpointed as a sinister conspiracy by an infamous
talk.bizarre posting ca. 1986. This was doubtless influenced
by the numerous "Eric" jokes in the Monty Python oeuvre.
There do indeed seem to be considerably more moustachioed
Erics in hackerdom than the frequency of these three traits
can account for unless they are correlated in some arcane way.
Well-known examples include {Eric Allman} (of the "Allman
style" described under {indent style}), {Erik Fair} (co-author
of NNTP), {Eric S. Raymond} and about fifteen others. The
organisation line "Eric Conspiracy Secret Laboratories" now
emanates regularly from more than one site.
[{Jargon File}]
(1998-10-20)