The Indianapolis 500 auto race took place on Sunday, and this year, one of the cars was sporting Tux, the penguin mascot of the Linux kernel project. Car #77 from Chastain Motorsport and driven by Roberto Moreno, had Tux and the text “LINUX” on the nose of the car. The fundraising effort for the car was lead by Tux 500, which managed to raise $18,308.90, enough to get the logo placed on a car, but well short of the $350k goal, which would have landed a primary sponsorship and branded the car’s team, “Team Linux”.

Unfortunately for the Linux fans out there, Moreno crashed the Linux-branded car after just 36 laps, placing car #77 in last place. It was definitely a driver problem! Heh. Ok, I can’t take credit for that joke – credit goes to a commenter on an Engadget article this afternoon. While I can admire the grassroots effort to raise funds to promote an open source effort such as Linux, why go for an Indy car?! Not only is the money put towards a single, one-day event, but the car itself is traveling in excess of 200mph – not a very high-impact billboard. $18,308.90 could have been put towards a longer-term marketing effort, and had the Linux community actually raised $350k, that could have funded substantial Linux marketing, or better yet, the funding of Linux developers on projects that have taken a ‘back seat’ to more pressing matters.