Contributor license agreement

Copyright terms A Contributor License Agreement (CLA) defines the terms under which intellectual property has been contributed to a company/project, typically software under an open source license. Rationale CLAs can be used to enable vendors to easily pursue legal resolution in the case of copyright disputes, or to relicense products to which contributions have been received from third parties. CLAs are important especially for corporate open source projects under a copyleft license, since without a CLA the contribution would restrict the guardian as well. The purpose of a CLA is to ensure that the guardian of a project's outputs has the necessary ownership or grants of rights over all contributions to allow them to distribute under the chosen license, often by granting an irrevocable license to allow the project maintainer to use the contribution; if copyright is actually transferred, the agreement is more normally known as a Copyright Transfer Agreement. CLAs also have roles in raising awareness of IPR issues within a project. Relicensing controversy When a CLA requires a contributor to assign unrestricted republishing rights to the project, contributed code can be relicensed at