Archive for the 'Motorsports' category

Humiliation and Triumph. Two great tastes that taste great together.

by T. Colin Dodd

In what could have been a devastating blow to the entire open source community, Roberto Moreno crashed his TUX500 project sponsored car in the first turn of the 37th lap at the Indianapolis 500. Moreno was unhurt, but his Linux/Tux-branded car was out of the race. Within seconds, so-called “jokes” were posted in the comments section at YouTube to the effect that “…when Linux crashes…it’s usually due to ‘third-party driver issues.’”

Those “jokes” then sparked a fierce debate among commenters as to the “prior art” and “obviousness” of the alleged “joke” which some had claimed to see on digg earlier. The debate soon escalated into an all-out flame war in which the primary casualty was dignity.

Two months before the motorsports/open source community tore itself apart in a spasm of self-immolating (the YouTube comments smelled like burning rubber and exhaust) mutual humiliation, redemption was already quietly and odorlessly on the prowl in Amsterdam.

Take heart open source motorheads, the C,mm,n (Common) is here! Three prototypes of the world’s first open source car were unveiled back in March by The Netherlands Society of Nature and the Environment in cooperation with the three Dutch technical universities at Delft, Eindhoven, and Twente. The C,mm,n is being designed by a community of engineers as a “mobility concept” car that will be shared (literally) among users (drivers) who join the c,mm,n community.

International racing rules and design specs will have to evolve to catch up to the c,mm,n, but as Linux/Racefans shake off their despair hangovers and try to climb back up the shame-spirals they descended on Monday, there is every reason to optimistic about the future.

Filed under Truth, People who get it, Motorsports, High Emotion on May 30th, 2007 | 1 comment »