Cisco invests in the open source community through contributions and "givebacks". For over three decades, Cisco has contributed to the development of open industry standards and modified open source code back to the open source community.

Cisco believes that these activities are critical to expanding the open source initiative and driving innovation, while meeting license obligations and aligning with the open source community. Cisco open source community activities promote greater customer and shareholder value through technology innovation, reduced time-to-market, and reduced cost of product development.

• Cisco Open Source Microgrants Program
  The Cisco Open Source Microgrant Program supports individuals and teams affiliated with qualified nonprofit organizations that are interested in working with Cisco and the open source community.

Open Source Organization Sponsorships

Cisco sponsors open source initiatives and organizations, including:

• The Linux Foundation, a nonprofit consortium founded in 2007 by the merger of the Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) and the Free Standards Group (FSG). It sponsors the work of Linux creator Linus Torvalds, and is supported by leading Linux and open source companies and developers. Cisco employees participate in Linux Foundation Workgroups and Advisory Councils User Advisory Council.
• The Eclipse Foundation, a not-for-profit, member-supported open source community that builds an open development platform of extensible frameworks, tools and runtimes for building, deploying, and managing software.
• Silicon Valley Education Foundation, a non-profit community foundation supporting local education initiatives. Cisco granted $405,000 to the foundation's Open Source Initiative to improve student attendance and attitudes toward learning while retaining teachers. Project goals encourage collaboration, promote educational resources, and provide tools for teachers.
• FreeBSD Foundation, a non-profit open source organization derived from BSD, a version of UNIX developed at the University of California, Berkeley. Cisco provided equipment to the foundation, including an advanced operating system for x86 compatible architectures, amd64 compatible architectures, ARM, IA-64, PowerPC, PC-98, and UltraSPARC architectures.