- Clone this repository.
- Make a copy of
agreement_template.mdunder theagreements/folder with your name. Eg.agreements/john_doe.md - Fill your details at the end and commit the file.
- Send a pull-request to this repository.
This is a short and informal FAQ. A more exhaustive FAQ is available here.
Contributor agreements are agreements between a Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) project and contributors to the project that set out what the project can do with the copyright of the contribution: code, translation, documentation, artwork, etc. The purpose of such agreements is to make the terms, under which contributions are made, explicit and thereby protect the project, the users of the project’s code or content, and often also the contributors themselves.
CLA (Contributor License Agreement) is a specific type of Contributor Agreement, in which the contributor retains the copyright of their work but grants to the project a license for its use. The details of the grant are specified in the terms of the agreement.
From the point of view of a project, a CLA helps, for example, to change the license of the project in the future. For example, a project which is GPL licensed today may need to be licensed differently tomorrow, say under the Apache License. This is only possible through the agreement of all copyright holders. The CLA is essentially that agreement.
From the contributor's point of view, the CLA clarifies that the contributor retains the copyright of their work.