[ Thanks to An Anonymous Reader for
this link. ]
“At first glance, the story of the Tux500 project doesn’t look
too unusual. A couple of devoted Linux advocates were looking for a
cool way to promote the operating system they love. Advertising on
a race car is a great way to get open source noticed, says Ken
‘helios’ Starks, one of the men working to raise enough money to
enter a Linux-sponsored car in the 2007 Indianapolis 500 race. It’s
the kind of grass-roots effort for which the open source community
is known: grab a domain name, put up a site, and submit the link to
Digg. But Starks and IT consultant Bob Moore, the organizers of the
Tux500 effort, added an extra step that is raising some eyebrows in
the community: they opened a PayPal account and are asking Linux
fans for more than a quarter of a million dollars.“If that seems outrageous, well, Ken Starks is no stranger to
Texas-sized dreams. Reading his blog is like listening to a fiery
Sunday sermon about the evils of imbibing in proprietary software.
The thought that he might be preaching to the choir never occurs to
Starks, or if it does, it certainly never deters him…”
[Editor’s Note: As full disclosure, it should be noted that
I am acting as an volunteer independent auditor for this
fundraising project. This is being done as a personal project, and
does not imply endorsement of this project by Linux Today or
Jupitermedia. –Brian
Proffitt.]