I learned through GigaOM this morning that Montreal-based Identi.ca has taken a round of funding from Montreal Startup. I was, and remain, a big supporter of Identi.ca and first covered it back in July, 2008.

It appears that Montreal Startup is the sole funder in this round so I will assume that GigaOM is right and the amount of funding is probably in the $200,000 to $400,000 range.

This is exciting news for the Canadian startup community, but just after hearing it this morning I came across this announcement from Google. In November 2007, Google acquired Jaiku, a “lifestreaming” service that resembles Twitter and which preceeded services such as Friendfeed which largely copy its functionality, and it was founded even before Twitter.

Google is announcing today that they are going open-source and will be making Jaiku freely available. On top of that, you will be able to easily deploy it to the Google App Engine.

I am not sure of the exact impact of Jaiku going open-source, but it no doubt has some impact on Identi.ca’s plans. I am confident that Evan and Montreal Startup will take this development in to account, and I certainly believe that there is more than enough room for a few open source applications to thrive.