WebODF

h1. Contributor License Agreement

Thank you for your interest in contributing to WebODF. This page describes the established guidelines for  contributions of code, patches and artwork to WebODF.

In order to clarify the intellectual property license granted with  contributions from any person or entity, KO GmbH, as maintainer of WebODF, must have a Contributor License Agreement (CLA) on file  that has been signed by each Contributor, indicating agreement to  certain license terms. This license is not only for the protection of  the contributors themselves, but also for the protection of the project  and its users; it does not change your rights to use your own Contributions for any other purpose.

All past and future contributors of non-trivial amounts of code (more  than just a line or two) to WebODF are required to sign the CLA. If  somebody is unable to sign the document, their contribution will not be  accepted or will be removed from WebODF.

Version 1.0 -  April 4th 2012 - http://webodf.org/redmine/projects/webodf/wiki/Contributor_License_Agreement

h2. Questions

h3. What is a CLA?

"A Contributor License Agreement (CLA) defines the terms under  which intellectual property has been contributed to a company/project, typically open source." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contributor_License_Agreement Quote from Wikipedia]

h3. Why is a signed CLA required?

The license agreement is a legal document in which you state you  are entitled to contribute the code to WebODF and are willing to  have it used in distributions and derivative works. This means that ''should'' there be any kind of legal issue in the future as to the origins and ownership of any particular piece of code, KO GmbH has the necessary forms on file from the contributor(s) saying they were  permitted to make this contribution.

The CLA also ensures that once you have provided a contribution, you cannot try to withdraw permission for its use at a later date. People and companies can therefore use WebODF, confident that they will not be asked to stop using pieces of the code at a later date.         

Being able to make a clear statement about the origins of the  code is very important as WebODF is adopted by large organizations who are necessarily cautious about adopting products with unknown origins. We wish for WebODF to be used and distributed as widely as possible and in order to do this with confidence, we need to be sure  about the origins and continuing existence of the code.

h3. Can I withdraw permission to use my contributions at a later date?

No. This is one of the reasons MuseScore requires a CLA. No  individual contributor can hold such a threat over the entire community  of users. Once you make a contribution, you are saying KO GmbH can use that piece of code forever.

Trivial patches like spelling fixes or missing words won't require an agreement, since anybody could do those. However, almost  anything will require a CLA.

h2. Contributors

Contributors who signed the CLA:

* (currently none)

h2. Text of the Contributor License Agreement

You and KO GmbH agree:    

You grant KO GmbH the ability to use the Contributions in any  way. You hereby grant to KO GmbH, a perpetual, non-exclusive,  worldwide, fully paid-up, royalty free, irrevocable copyright license to reproduce, prepare derivative works of, publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense, and distribute your Contribution and such derivative works.

You are able to grant KO GmbH these rights. You represent that You are legally entitled to grant the above license. If Your employer has rights to intellectual property that You create, You represent that You have received permission to make the Contributions on behalf of that employer, or that Your employer has waived such rights for the Contributions.

The Contributions are your original work. You represent that the  Contributions are Your original works of authorship, and to Your  knowledge, no other person claims, or has the right to claim, any right  in any invention or patent related to the Contributions. You also represent that You are not legally obligated, whether by entering into an agreement or otherwise, in any way that conflicts with the terms of this license.  For example, if you have signed an agreement requiring  you to assign the intellectual property rights in the Contributions to an employer or customer, that would conflict with the terms of this  license.   

KO GmbH determines the code that is in the WebODF project. You understand that the decision to include the Contribution in any  project or source repository is entirely that of KO GmbH, and this agreement does not guarantee that the Contributions will be  included in any product.

No Implied Warranties. KO GmbH acknowledges that, except as  explicitly described in this Agreement, the Contribution is provided on  an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, EITHER  EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, ANY WARRANTIES OR  CONDITIONS OF TITLE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, MERCHANTABILITY, OR FITNESS FOR A  PARTICULAR PURPOSE.