Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Announces Software Awards

["Christopher J. Mackie" <CJM@mellon.org>]

The following information was released to the press Tuesday 
afternoon. The full CFN (including nomination form) can be found 
at

http://rit.mellon.org/awards/

If you have questions, please don't hesitate to contact me.

Best regards,  --Chris

=============================

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Mellon Foundation Announces Awards for Open Source Software

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is pleased to announce today a 
Call for Nominations for the 2006 Mellon Awards for Technology 
Collaboration (MATC). These awards, to be bestowed for the first 
time at an international technology conference in the Fall of 
2006, will recognize not-for-profit organizations that have 
demonstrated exceptional leadership in the collaborative 
development of open-source software through the contribution of 
substantial, self-funded organizational resources to the 
open-source project for which they are nominated. The nomination 
period ends August 15, 2006.

MATC awards will be made at two levels-$25,000 and $100,000-for 
significant contributions to collaborative, open-source software 
development that serves one of the Foundation's traditional 
constituencies. The level of the award will depend on the scale 
and significance of the nominated project.  Any U.S. or foreign 
organization that meets the Foundation's legal criteria for 
receiving grants and its strict standards for excellence is 
eligible for consideration. The Board of Trustees of the Mellon 
Foundation has authorized multiple awards at each level.

MATC recipients will be selected by an Award Committee consisting 
of:

* Mitchell Baker, CEO, Mozilla Corporation

* Sir Timothy Berners-Lee KBE, FRS, FREng., Director, World Wide 
Web Consortium; 3Com Founders Professor of Computer Science, 
M.I.T.; Professor of Computer Science, University of Southampton

* Vinton G. Cerf, Vice President & Chief Internet Evangelist, 
Google, Inc.

* Ira Fuchs, Vice-President, Research in Information Technology, 
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

* John Gage, Chief Researcher and Director of the Science Office, 
Sun Microsystems, Inc.

* Tim O'Reilly, Founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media

* John Seely Brown, Former Chief Scientist, Xerox Corp.; Former 
Director, Xerox PARC

* Donald J. Waters, Program Officer, Program in Scholarly 
Communication, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

The full text of the Call for Nominations is available now, at

http://rit.mellon.org/awards/

Founded in 1969, with offices in New York City and Princeton, New 
Jersey, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is a philanthropic 
organization with traditional constituencies in higher education 
(with a particular interest in the arts and humanities), museums 
and art conservation, performing arts, conservation and the 
environment, and public affairs. Among the Mellon Foundation's 
signature technology projects are the online academic journal 
repository JSTOR and the digital art archive ARTStor; the 
Foundation also funds a variety of open-source software 
development projects in higher education and other not-for-profit 
sectors.

For further information, please contact:

Christopher J. Mackie
Associate Program Officer
Research in Information Technology
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
282 Alexander Rd.
Princeton, NJ 08540
609-924-9424
646-274-6351 (fax)
cjm@mellon.org
http://rit.mellon.org