Here’s one for the “cool” department:

Joe Trippi, Howard Dean’s campaign manager, was a key advisor to Progeny in 2001 on our business strategy amidst the collapse of the capital markets. Among other things, Joe and his colleagues were responsible for planting the seeds that moved Progeny away from Progeny Debian and toward our current distribution-agnostic strategy, a strategy that has proven central to our current success.

Since I know Joe, I’ve been following Howard Dean since before most people outside of Vermont knew who Howard Dean was. Now, of course, Gov. Dean is the frontrunner, and Joe played a central role in crafting the grassroots strategy that helped Dean emerge as the unlikely Democratic frontrunner. After seeing Joe in Newsweek on Saturday waiting to get a haircut, then on Fox News that same night, I did a bit of googling:

From Larry Lessig’s interview with Joe:

Trippi: I used to work for a little while for Progeny Linux Systems. I always wondered how could you take that same collaboration that occurs in Linux and open source and apply it here. What would happen if there were a way to do that and engage everybody in a presidential campaign?

Lessig: So is this an open-source presidential campaign?

Trippi: Yes. That moment when that was all going on made me think, “That’s sort of what we’re building here.” I guess it’s about as open as you can do it in modern-day politics.

And from a Slashdot comment Joe made:

Thanks for the welcome — and I will try to post on other issues — my problem is not having the time — its tough enough just keeping up with everything as it is! Personally I have spent the better part of the last three to four years working on a lot of issues discussed here and with a lot of the technology. I advised Progeny Linux Systems — the Debian flavor, it gave me alot of insight as to what open source politics would be like and how the same principles could be applied. Really a lot of the same forces are at work if you think about it. Entrenched and flawed system, closed to everyone except the few that aim to keep control etc vs open dialogue, open collaboration, and a better solution emerging from the common actions of many. The country was not founded on the principle of self interest — it was founded on the principle of the common good. And its fascinating to me how on every front its the commons we need to build again.

So, it would appear that Progeny, Linux, and the open source movement in general has had some small influence on a (thus far) highly successful presidential campaign strategy. And I can tell you that Joe Trippi (and, by association, Howard Dean) gets it. He is the real deal. Within the first hour of talking with him, Joe understood the open source movement as well as I did and was able to show me things I hadn’t been able to see even after eight years.