| Tux enters the Indy 500 |
Apr. 17, 2007
You might think if someone were to mention Linux at the Indianapolis 500, they would be talking about Linux in an embedded system or powering a server tracking information about the race. You'd be wrong. Instead, there's a group seeking to fund an Indy racer in the name of Linux.
The group was started by Ken Starks, also known as Helios, the founder of Linux marketing site Lobby4linux.com and author of the well-known Linux opinion site Blog of Helios. With the Tux 500 program, Starks, Bob Moore, and Ted Woerner aim to see to it that when the flag drops on the 2007 Indianapolis 500, a race car emblazoned with Linux decals will be roaring down the track.
Why? In a word: marketing.
Starks and company believe that the Linux community, in the largest sense, has done a lousy job of getting the word out to nontechnical people about the operating system's virtues. While some organizations, such as Red Hat, Novell and Xandros, have done a good to fair job of spreading the word about their own brands of Linux, the larger Linux community -- made up of smaller distributions such as MEPIS, Linux Mint, PCLinuxOS -- and their fans is almost invisible.
The solution: Take Linux to the Indy 500, where millions of race fans will be exposed to our favorite operating system and penguin.
This is not an idle dream. Starks has gotten support from such Linux community leaders as LXer Editor in Chief D.C. Parris and Linux Today's Brian Proffitt.
Starks and his crew have already arranged with Tom Chastain, a well-known Indianapolis racing car team owner and the owner of Chastain Motorsports, to support his team's entrance in this year's Indy 500. And, as Starks said on the Lobby4Linux.com site, "If we've got anything to do with it ... as long as I have one struggling breath left inside of me, that monster of a race car will have Linux splashed all over it when the flag drops."
To get Linux "splashed all over" the car, the Tux 500 program needs to raise $350,000 within a month. As of April 16, the group had only been able to raise not quite $5,000.
However, as Stark points out on the Tux 500 site, "If less than 1% of the Linux community donates $1, this will happen."
Will it be worth it? According to the numbers in the Tux 500 FAQ, the answer is yes. The average TV exposure value for team sponsors during the 2006 Indianapolis 500 was pegged at $553,000 by companies that track this information.
Personally, as someone whose eyes glaze over at the idea of watching any car race, I'm not sure I can see the point. But I'm smart enough to know that I am not everyone and that auto racing is extremely popular. A 2005 Harris Poll found professional football to be the favorite U.S. sport, followed by college football; baseball; and, outdoing basketball and hockey, auto racing. Many sports commentators now would go so far as to say that auto racing is ahead of baseball.
So, given all that -- and that I can't see anyone shelling out hundreds of millions of dollars to put a Detroit Linux Lions team on the gridiron any time soon or the Pittsburgh Penguins preferring a more athletic-looking penguin for their logo -- why not the Indy 500?
The Linux-laden Chastain Motorsports No. 77 Honda will be driven by IndyCar veteran Stephan Gregoire.
Ladies and gentlemen, start your penguins!
-- Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
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