Vertica, the core analytical database in the Micro Focus (LSE: MCRO; NYSE: MFGP) software portfolio, today announced the rollout of a program that rewards open-source developers for their contributions to technology advancement. The Vertica Open Source Fund is a key initiative in Vertica’s ongoing commitment to building an extensive analytical platform that is API-friendly and supports the millions of data engineers, data scientists and developers seeking to gain insight from an extraordinary amount of data.

“The open-source community plays a substantial role in driving innovation for Vertica and the tech community as a whole, and many of those open-source developer contributions are taken for granted. The Vertica Open Source Fund seeks to give back to the open-source community and recognize deserving contributions,” said Rohit Amarnath, Vertica CTO. “The fund will spur innovation for Vertica and its users and demonstrate our continued commitment to the open-source ecosystem.”

To be eligible for award, a project must benefit the Vertica Analytics Platform, encourage integration with Vertica, expand the analytics ecosystem, or generally improve the Vertica team’s work product.

Other details and rules of the Vertica Open Source Fund include:

• Projects must be nominated by Vertica employees.
• Vertica employees cannot be nominated or receive an award.
• The project must be actively maintained over time with further functionality.
• A project does not need to be dependent on Vertica code.
• The project must live up to Vertica’s guiding principles to work hard, smart and as a team.

Once nominated, the project will undergo final review by a committee of Vertica team members. Awards will be distributed via the GitHub Sponsorship program and can be issued at any time, with awards being announced publicly each quarter.