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I'm inspried by a variety of things, both small and large: a really good cup of coffee, great art, contribution, reading the Sunday New York Times, sitting in the Linux kernel panel session at LinuxCon [1]. But this year in particular, I'm more inpsired than ever by what is happening because of Linux. The Raspberry Pi [2] is putting computing power in anyone's hands; the Cadillac Cue [3]is illustrating just the tip of the iceberg of what Linux is doing for car infotainment systems; and Google, Facebook and Amazon all continue to push the limits on how we connect as a global culture thanks to Linux. This year, too, Linux is playing a major role in how we define the open cloud [4] and is bringing more attention to why we need to fight for openness in cloud computing.
All of these reasons and more are why we created a theme for this year's Linux Foundation T-shirt contest [5], "Inspired by Linux." [6] My colleague Libby Clark last week shared a video [7] that gives me goosebumps and that we can already see by the submissions coming in are inspiring people to design this year's T-shirt. To provide even more inspiration and direction on how to become a finalist, I thought I'd share last year's finalists. I hope this helps designers understand the basic elements we're lookging for when choosing the top 5-7 for community vote: artistic quality, originality, creativity, simplicity in design, and adherence to the contest theme. Enjoy the slideshow, and we look forward to reviewing your design. And, to this year's two winners-to-be, we'll see you at LinuxCon [1] and CloudOpen [4]!