Tux500 Update: Linux crashes!

[walter_mellon]

I thought a Linux car wouldn't crash???
I was at the track today watching Stephan Gregoire when he crashed in the first turn, damaging the gearbox of the car and cracking a vertebrae in his back. He will be unable to race. This is really unfortunate as he had the fastest time of the day for cars still waiting to qualify for the race (217.851 mph).
Roberto Moreno is rumored to be his replacement when they get the car fixed, but the gearbox is a really expensive part to replace. The Chastain team really needs your support now.

[allix]

I think that is funny , don't get me wrong i hope the driver was not injured, its just the idea of linux on a car and then the car crashes

On a realistic note two days to go and there no where near the amount they wanted to raise.

What does this tell us about the community? That they don;t care about markting linux ?

[snarkout]

It tells us that one of the major problems FOSS faces is that most people are complete dicks about paying for software they can have for free. "Now I'm the sort of person who'd never pay for software, but..." it a common segue on FOSS podcasts. It's not a "linux community thing" and it's no different anywhere else - Theo had to beg and threaten to pull together funds for OBSD recently.

It also tells us that one of the major drawbacks of using FOSS, besides the common bug injection and lack of roadmap, is that everywhere you turn theres some guy with his hand out. I contribute what I can, when I can, but there's simply no way in hell I can give every single project I enjoy $40 or eve $20 a year. I'd be spending thousands on software.

Finally, it tells us that random beggaring rather than coming up with good, well planned funraising methods is a shitty way to raise money. I have my ear pretty close to the ground, and this is the first I'd even heard of this, for instance.

[allix]

If something is free , most people take it for free, you can beg as much as you like, and you will get money but its never going to be contribution from everyone.
I see homeless people that play songs on the tubes for money and they do get money but not from everyone, its the same with free software, people are doing something for everyone for free and by looking at history not everyone pays.

Theo just took a more aggressive approach, but if you really want to make money from software , you need either to have proper support which openbsd does not do directly, sure they recommend people that can support openbsd boxes, but weather that money goes back into the project is another thing.

The other way of making money is by not getting into free software, adobe for instance sell products and don't have to resort to aggressive posts to make money.

I believe a lot of us in the community never thought FOSS would get as big as it is now, so we were never prepared way back then for this explosion and when it happened, the pressure happens, people who rely and use expect more and so on and so forth,

[walter_mellon]

The Chastain team got the car repaired quickly and Roberto Moreno qualified successfully. But, at 216.229 mph, he is the second slowest car in the field and could be bumped by a faster car on Sunday qualifying.
The report on Stephan Gregoire is that he has an "endplate fracture of the T3 vertebrae" and is unable to move around without pain, although he should recover completely.

[walter_mellon]

Roberto Moreno has qualified the Linux-sponsored number 77 car for the Indianapolis 500. With an hour left before the end of qualifying, Moreno had the slowest car in the field and was in danger of being bumped. He went back out and qualified at 220.299, more than four miles per hour faster than his Saturday speed. He will start in the 31st position.
The team received $12,700 from 571 donors in 30 countries. The average gift was $22.
Watch the coverage next Sunday and root for the car with the penguin logo.