The Ada Initiative is an organization dedicated to addressing gender diversity head-on, with a specific focus on open source and open data communities. Their mission is critical, and their work is much-needed by our community.

In a blog post this week, Sage Weil, principal architect of the Ceph project at Red Hat, has agreed to match $8,192 of Ada Initiative contributions dollar-for-dollar during their fundraiser. In his post, Sage writes, "As Inktank and as DreamHost we were proud to be early supporters of the Ada Initiative. Today, I am proud to continue that support with a personal challenge to the open source storage community."

His challenge applies to the larger open source storage world, including the Ceph, Gluster, Swift, and Linux storage and file systems communities, and goes until Wednesday, October 8th, when the Ada Initiative’s fundraising drive ends.

Dave McAllister, Gluster and Big Data Community Manager at Red Hat, followed up in a blog post on the Gluster site. "With GlusterFS as a significant part of the open storage communities, I’d like to see us also work to meet this challenge and to extend our own diversity to all," Dave writes.

The challenge countdown is on, so donate to the Ada Initiative now.