Version 1.0, effective as of 24 August 2026

1. Purpose

Avalonia is a free and open-source software framework developed and maintained by AvaloniaUI OÜ, a commercial software company. Avalonia is not a community-owned project and is not governed by a foundation. AvaloniaUI OÜ creates, funds, and maintains it and is responsible for its direction and long-term sustainability.

Avalonia’s open-source licences are copyright licences. They are not trademark licences, and they do not grant rights to AvaloniaUI OÜ’s audience, infrastructure, brand or commercial products.

AvaloniaUI OÜ has invested years of engineering effort and substantial financial resources in building Avalonia, establishing its reputation, growing its user base, and creating the spaces through which developers meet, learn and collaborate. Those valuable assets belong to AvaloniaUI OÜ, and AvaloniaUI OÜ protects them.

Avalonia-operated community spaces exist to support Avalonia and the people building with it. They are not advertising infrastructure and may not be used as acquisition, distribution or promotional channels for products or projects that compete with Avalonia software or commercial AvaloniaUI OÜ offerings.

This policy defines how those spaces may be used. It governs AvaloniaUI OÜ’s own spaces and nothing else. It does not modify any open-source licence, and it does not restrict what anyone may lawfully develop, publish or discuss elsewhere.

2. Open-Source Freedoms

Avalonia is free and open-source software. Anyone may use it, study it, fork it, modify it and redistribute it under the terms of its open-source licences.

Anyone may build products with Avalonia, including products that compete directly with AvaloniaUI OÜ’s own commercial offerings, and may do so freely, without permission and without apology. Competing with AvaloniaUI OÜ does not require our approval. Where a person has the legal right to build or distribute a competing product, this policy does not restrict that right.

AvaloniaUI OÜ honours these freedoms in full. Nothing in this policy limits them. This policy governs one thing only: the use of the spaces, audience and infrastructure that AvaloniaUI OÜ itself operates.

3. What Open-Source Licences Do Not Grant

Open-source licences define rights in the software to which they apply. They do not create:

a right to promotion through Avalonia-operated channels;
a right to access or market to AvaloniaUI OÜ’s audience;
a right to use Avalonia trademarks except as permitted by the Avalonia Trademark Guidelines;
a right to access proprietary AvaloniaUI OÜ products or their source code;
a right to assistance from AvaloniaUI OÜ in developing competing products;
a right to use Avalonia-operated infrastructure to acquire users, customers or contributors for competing projects; or
an obligation on AvaloniaUI OÜ to remain commercially neutral towards products that compete with its own.

AvaloniaUI OÜ protects its commercial interests while honouring in full the rights granted under Avalonia’s open-source licences. There is no conflict between those positions.

4. Scope

This policy applies to all spaces operated, administered or officially provided by AvaloniaUI OÜ, including:

official Telegram and other chat groups;
GitHub repositories, issues, discussions and related project infrastructure;
official discussion boards;
Avalonia-operated social media communities;
events, meetups and online sessions operated by AvaloniaUI OÜ;
comment areas and other communication facilities provided by AvaloniaUI OÜ; and
any other channel identified as an official Avalonia space.

Spaces operated or moderated by third parties are outside the scope of this policy.

5. Purpose of Avalonia-Operated Spaces

Avalonia-operated spaces exist so that developers can ask questions, exchange technical knowledge, report problems, help one another, discuss the development of Avalonia and show what they have built with it.

AvaloniaUI OÜ operates them. They are not neutral or public infrastructure, and access to the audience within them is subject to the boundaries set out in this policy.

Avalonia-operated spaces must not be used to acquire users, customers, traffic or contributors for products or projects that compete with Avalonia software or commercial AvaloniaUI OÜ offerings.

Applications, libraries, integrations, themes, samples, educational resources and other ecosystem projects that do not compete with Avalonia software or commercial AvaloniaUI OÜ offerings are welcome in Avalonia-operated spaces.

Commercial participation by ecosystem partners, component vendors, consultants and other businesses is welcome where relevant to the discussion.

Participation must contribute to the purpose of the space. Avalonia-operated spaces may not be used primarily to advertise external products or services, acquire users or customers, recruit contributors for unrelated projects, redirect discussions towards a participant’s own offerings, or conduct unsolicited commercial solicitation.

7. Competing Products and Projects

For the purposes of this policy, a Competing Project is a product or project that replaces, substantially replicates, or is presented or reasonably understood as an alternative or substitute for Avalonia software or for any commercial product, component, extension or developer tool offered by AvaloniaUI OÜ.

Examples include alternative IDE extensions, developer and debugging tools, UI controls and component libraries, media, browser, document or data components, design or productivity tooling, and forks or derivatives positioned as replacements for Avalonia software or AvaloniaUI OÜ products or tooling.

As set out in Section 2, the creation, maintenance and publication of a Competing Project is permitted and is not restricted by this policy.

However, authors, maintainers, employees, representatives and material contributors to a Competing Project may not use Avalonia-operated spaces to promote or acquire users for that project.

This applies regardless of whether the project is free or paid, open source or proprietary, commercial or non-commercial, established or experimental, and regardless of the author’s motivation or expectations for adoption. The size, popularity or intent behind a Competing Project does not change the purpose of Avalonia-operated spaces.

The guiding test is simple: would the activity, by or on behalf of someone connected with the project, direct users towards an alternative to Avalonia software or to a commercial AvaloniaUI OÜ product? If yes, its promotion belongs outside Avalonia-operated channels.

A participant may not introduce their own Competing Project into a conversation and then rely on subsequent questions or expressions of interest to provide links, repositories, packages, marketplace listings or other promotional material. Where another participant wishes to learn more about such a project, that conversation must be taken to private channels or channels operated by the project itself.

8. Discussion Is Not Promotion

This policy does not prohibit discussion of competing technologies. Community members may compare Avalonia products with alternatives, discuss the advantages and disadvantages of different technologies, discuss compatibility and interoperability, share relevant benchmarks, and criticise Avalonia and its products.

The distinction is between discussion and promotion. An independent user explaining that they use another product because it solves a particular problem is discussion. A person connected with a product introducing it to prospective users, soliciting interest or directing people towards it is promotion.

The presence or absence of a hyperlink is not determinative. Moderators assess the substance and context of the activity and determine whether it falls within this policy.

9. Forks and Derivative Works

Avalonia open-source software may be forked, modified and redistributed to the extent permitted by its applicable open-source licence. This policy does not restrict those rights.

Permission to create or distribute a fork does not create a right to promote that fork through Avalonia-operated infrastructure. Forks and derivatives positioned as replacements or alternatives to Avalonia software or AvaloniaUI OÜ tooling are subject to the promotional restrictions in this policy.

Forks and derivative projects must comply with the Avalonia Trademark Guidelines.

10. Trademarks and Branding

The Avalonia trademarks are valuable assets of AvaloniaUI OÜ. AvaloniaUI OÜ actively protects those marks to preserve their distinctiveness and prevent confusion about the source, sponsorship, or affiliation of products and services.

Open-source software licences do not grant rights to Avalonia trademarks. Use of Avalonia names, logos and other marks is governed exclusively by the Avalonia Trademark Guidelines, and this policy grants no additional trademark rights.

Projects must not imply that they are official Avalonia products, endorsed by AvaloniaUI OÜ, affiliated with AvaloniaUI OÜ or otherwise authorised where no such relationship exists.

11. Commercial Avalonia Products and Licensees

Avalonia commercial products are governed by their applicable licence agreements and Product Schedules. This policy does not replace or modify those contractual obligations.

Commercial licences may impose additional restrictions concerning competing products, proprietary technology and other uses of Avalonia commercial software. A project being permissible under an open-source licence does not mean that every activity involving Avalonia commercial products is permitted, and compliance with this policy does not imply compliance with any commercial licence.

12. Moderation

AvaloniaUI OÜ moderates its spaces to preserve their purpose.

Moderators may remove or edit content without prior notice. Moderators may, at their discretion, explain a boundary and ask a participant to redirect their activity.

Breaches of this policy may result in content removal, a formal warning, temporary restriction, or removal from one or more Avalonia-operated spaces. Serious or deliberate misuse may result in immediate restriction.

Moderation decisions may take account of patterns of behaviour across Avalonia-operated spaces. Prior non-enforcement, whether in respect of the same participant or others, does not limit AvaloniaUI OÜ’s ability to enforce this policy in any instance.

13. Consistency and Context

AvaloniaUI OÜ aims to apply this policy consistently across its operated spaces and participants, while recognising that moderation decisions are necessarily contextual. Moderators retain discretion when distinguishing discussion from promotion, and may consider whether the participant is connected with the project discussed, whether they introduced it into the conversation, whether the project competes with Avalonia software or a commercial AvaloniaUI OÜ offering, whether the activity directs users towards it, and whether guidance has previously been given.

14. Sustainability

Commercial products and services fund the development of Avalonia. They pay for engineering, testing, infrastructure, security, releases, documentation and support.

Protecting those products’ ability to generate revenue is part of protecting Avalonia, and with it the continued investment that benefits the entire .NET ecosystem. AvaloniaUI OÜ will continue to support a broad ecosystem and the freedoms granted by its open-source licences, and it will continue to protect the brand, products, audience and infrastructure it has built.

Freedom to build does not create an entitlement to AvaloniaUI OÜ’s assistance, audience or infrastructure when competing with AvaloniaUI OÜ.

15. Relationship with Other Policies

This policy supplements the Avalonia Code of Conduct, which governs standards of behaviour in Avalonia spaces. The Avalonia Trademark Guidelines govern use of Avalonia trademarks. The applicable commercial licence agreement and Product Schedule govern use of commercial Avalonia products. Conduct may fall within more than one of these policies.

16. Questions and Permissions

Participants unsure whether an announcement, project, or activity is appropriate for an Avalonia-operated space must ask before posting. Questions may be raised with the moderators of the relevant space or sent to [email protected]

AvaloniaUI OÜ may expressly permit activities that would otherwise fall within this policy, including partner announcements, interoperability initiatives, educational projects, ecosystem showcases and sponsorships. Permission in one case does not establish permission in another.

17. Updates

AvaloniaUI OÜ may update this policy from time to time. The current version, together with its effective date, will be published through the Avalonia Legal Center.

Avalonia is a registered trademark of AvaloniaUI OÜ.

Avalonia Community Spaces Policy