Not long ago, lobby4linux announced a rather strange project that consists in raising money from donations and start a marketing campaign. The
Tux500 project, as it was called, intends to collect community donations in order to enter a Linux sponsored car in the Indianapolis 500 race, on May 27th, 2007. The project aims to collect $350, 000 or even more if possible. This goal is weirder as the entire amount must be raised in almost 40 days.
The Linux Foundation however,
along with numerous members of the open-source community, did not get very excited with the idea. There are rumors that it might even file a complaint form to report the violation of the Linux trademark usage. It seems that the Foundation does not consider Tux500 as affiliated with Linux, but that it misrepresents it instead in order to gain profit. But this is not the only ugly aspect regarding Tux500.
The project founders claim they've collected almost $10,000 by May 2, which is a pretty good amount, even though the deadline is May 21. A minimum of $25,000 are said to be needed in order to put the Linux decal on a Chastain Motorsports car. The first decal is said to have already been applied somewhere outside of Columbus, Ohio. For now, only Tux will appear on the front side of the car, but if donations continue to come in, more parts will be covered with Linux logo. People close to Ken Starks from Lobby4linux.com, one of the project's co-coordinators, have also created a
video and posted it on
Youtube.com, in order to give more details on the importance of a Linux presence in the Indy500 race.
Tux500 gained many topics in forums, most of them presenting it as the "Tux500 scam". Stories of how
the Tux500 team rigged Digg in order to promote the initiative is just one of the examples to prove the amplitude gained by this project.
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