I've always liked Pierre Omidyar, one of the first of the truly successful dot-com'ers, the man who put himself online in a blog, one of those rare net entrepreneurs who really gets it and proves his thoughts by putting his money where his mouth is. In the inbox today, news of the new Omidyar Network Commons LLC where Pierre and Pam are joining up with an impressive list of friends to prove the power of individuals to make a real difference, and among their first acts in that regard, a whopping $400,000 handed to the newly redubbed Open Source Technology Group whom you and I know and love as the old OSDN and their flagship SourceForge

"SourceForge.net is critical to building and supporting the needs of the Open Source community," said Iqbal Paroo, President and COO of Omidyar Network. "Like Open Source itself, SourceForge.net embraces collaboration, sharing, and transparency as better ways to develop and distribute software. Through this approach, every willing developer has the power to make a difference to the success of Open Source."

Hear, hear. Well said. The grant is earmarked for useability updates and to develop new developer collaboration and software distribution aids such as the File Release System, expanded forums, and new statistics trackers offered free to any developers willing to share their work.

[ Source: VA Software: Press Release ]