The New York Times is reporting that Facebook is settling its lawsuit with the founders of ConnectU, for whom Mark Zuckerberg once worked.

The ConnectU people, brothers Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss and their friend Divya Narendra, had hired Zuckerberg to work on a social networking site, but charged that Zuckerberg stole the idea from them and created Facebook.

As the Times reports,

They say that he stalled on the project for months while nurturing his own idea and ultimately starting TheFacebook.com. The case cast doubts on Mr. Zuckerberg’s ingenuity, and discovery efforts turned up some embarrassing material — like his diary. Facebook clearly needed to make the suit go away before a widely expected initial public offering that could come as early as next year.

Most commenters treated the case as if the Winklevosses and Narendra were just gunning for some easy money. But in 02138's investigation of Facebook's origins, I got the impression that they were genuinely pissed off at Zuckerberg and sincerely believed that he had done them wrong.

I imagine they feel vindicated by this settlement....