Our Open Source Policy

As the successor to the first hardware company in the world to commercially support a product on open source platforms in 1993 (Cyclades Corporation), Avocent understands the technical and business benefits of leveraging Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) and maintaining a positive relationship with the FOSS community. We believe that, under specific circumstances, certain types of general-purpose software (such as operating system kernels) are better developed under a community development model, lowering development costs and generating innovation that benefits our customers.

Consistent with that attitude, we support and respect the FOSS community. Several of our employees engage in FOSS development and may develop relationships or become part of development communities. As a company, we embrace FOSS in certain circumstances primarily because we believe that is a positive force towards delivering more value to our customers. We do not see FOSS as an exclusive path, and we also (and primarily) pursue the development of proprietary software.

We only release source code for software we develop when that is required for compliance or if we collectively review and approve that release as a business decision. Lacking such requirement or approval, any internally developed software is to be considered company proprietary. We see FOSS as technologies we can apply to address ours and our customer’s problems, not as an end in itself.

To request a FOSS kit, please complete the FOSS Kit Request Form.