Open Source Initiative Welcomes Cumulus Networks As Premium Sponsor

PALO ALTO, Calif. - Oct. 18, 2017 - PRLog -- The Open Source Initiative^® (OSI), the internationally recognized home of the open source software movement working to raise awareness and adoption of open source software, announced today the generous sponsorship of Cumulus Networks. Cumulus joins OSI's growing community of corporations that recognize the importance of not only investing in open source software projects and development, but also building a diverse ecosystem that promotes collaboration, enables innovation, and ensures quality.

Cumulus Networks has a strong tradition of internally-driven development of original open source software, including most notably, contributions to the Linux kernel that complete the data center feature set for Linux such as Virtual Routing and Forwarding (VRF), MPLS, MLAG infrastructure, multicast routing features, etc.  Cumulus' most recent open source effort is FRRouting, co-developed by a group of contributing companies in the open networking space, to enhance routing protocols.  Cumulus Networks has also been a key driving member of the Open Network Install Environment (ONIE) with contributions to the Open Compute Project, Prescriptive Topology Manager--which simplifies the deployment of large L3 networks--and ifupdown2, a rewrite of Debian's tool for configuring networks that greatly simplifies large, complicated networking configurations.

In addition to technical and code contributions, Cumulus has also invested in the development of educational and training programs to help open source developers and users become active contributors with a wide range of freely available resources. "We're very excited by Cumulus' sponsorship," said Patrick Masson, General Manager of the OSI. "Of course we're very grateful for their generous financial support, but also, as part of the sponsorship, we'll also be working with the Cumulus team to create and distribute professional development and training resources that will help the entire open source community learn new technologies, develop skills and more deeply engage with projects."

"Open source is one Cumulus Networks' core principles, and we have a strong background at the company of both developing original open source software and contributing to projects," said Shrijeet Mukherjee, VP of Engineering of Cumulus Networks. "We're thrilled to sponsor The Open Source Initiative and contribute to an organization that is so positively impacting the community by raising awareness and adoption of open source."

Contributions like those from Cumulus, allow the OSI to maintain its internationally recognized status as a nexus of trust with a mandate to protect and promote open source. The OSI engages with open source developers, communities of practice, as well as the public and private sectors around the world, furthering open source technologies, licenses, and models of development that can provide economic and strategic advantages.

About Cumulus Networks
Cumulus Networks (https://www.cumulusnetworks.com/) is leading the transformation of bringing web-scale networking to enterprise cloud. As the only systems solution that fully unlocks the vertical network stacks of the modern data center, Cumulus Linux allows companies of all sizes to affordably build and efficiently operate their networks just like the world's largest data centers. By allowing operators to use standard hardware components, Cumulus Networks offers unprecedented operational speed and agility, at the industry's most competitive cost. Cumulus Networks has received venture funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Battery Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Peter Wagner and four of the original VMware founders.

About The Open Source Initiative
Founded in 1998, the Open Source Initiative (OSI) protects and promotes open source software, development and communities, championing software freedom in society through education, collaboration, and infrastructure, stewarding the Open Source Definition, and preventing abuse of the ideals and ethos inherent to the open source movement. The OSI is a California public benefit corporation, with 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status. For more information about the OSI, see https://opensource.org.