Marc - my apologies for the late reply. I missed your post somehow.

re: IBM CD's - it is important to have the latest one. They are generally not the latest versions available out there, but the CD's are updated with some regularity - at least once a year.

On the IBM web-site they are updated more often, but can still be lagging compared to what can be found at the project sites.

The IBM AIX toolbox has "collections" and there is a so-called easy-interface, using wget if I remember correctly, that can get the latest versions from the IBM area.

There are three areas that I know of that provide pre-packaged AIX opensource software - all AS-IS - and varying degrees of being current. These are:
http://www.perzl.org/aix/index.php?n=Main.HomePage
http://www.bullfreeware.com/
and
http://pware.hvcc.edu/

The perzl site also has some related links - for Firefox e.g., but more specialized.

p.s. It is more time consuming that I anticipated, but I am looking into starting up a repository myself. So, out of curiository I am interested in what you have learned in the last month.

Note: something that is not taking a lot of time is acting as a mirror for GNU software.
Check out: http://mirrors.aixtools.net/gnu/ and http://mirrors.aixtools.net/sv/