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Contributor license agreement FAQ
Everybody who contributes code to GeoTrellis is going to be asked to sign a Contribute License Agreement (CLA). GeoTrellis's CLA is based on the one used by the Apache Software Foundation for contributions to their projects. This particular agreement has been used by other software projects in addition to Apache and is generally accepted as reasonable within the open source community.
Contributions to the project, no matter what kind, are always very welcome. Everyone who contributes code to GeoTrellis will be asked to sign the Eclipse Contributor License Agreements. The Eclipse CLA requires an Eclipse account and an electronic signature at Eclipse Contributor License Agreement.
Being able to make a clear statement about the origins of the code is very important as GeoTrellis is adopted by large organizations that are necessarily cautious about adopting products with unknown origins. We would like to see GeoTrellis used and distributed as widely as possible and in order to do this with confidence, we need to be sure about the origins of the code and documentation. The CLA 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 the project, confident that they will not be asked to stop using pieces of the code at a later date.
The license agreement is a legal document in which you state you are entitled to contribute the code, documentation or translation to GeoTrellis 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, we will have has the necessary forms on file from the contributor(s) saying they were permitted to make this contribution.
Finally, consolidation of licensing of the code enables the future possibility of relicensing the whole code base should that become desirable to the community. Without the CLAs, Azavea would have to contact and obtain permission from every single contributor before the new license could be applied. This has happened on other open source projects, and we want to learn from these past issues.
No. We will be asking all new contributors and patch submitters to sign before they submit anything substantial. Trivial patches like spelling fixes or missing words in the documentation won't require an agreement, since anybody could do those. However, anything of substance will require a CLA.
No. That’s kind of the point. This protects the whole community, enabling both Azavea and downstream users of the project to rely on it. Once you make a contribution, you are saying we can use that piece of code forever. You can, however, stop your participation in the project at any time, but you cannot rescind your previous assignments or grants with respect to your prior contributions.
Not all contributions will be used or incorporated into the code for the project. The decision to incorporate the code or not is at the discretion of the project technical lead.
No. This is a license agreement, not a copyright assignment. You still maintain the full copyright for your contributions. You are only providing a license to Azavea to distribute your code within the GeoTrellis project.
If any of your contributions to GeoTrellis are created as part of your employment, it may be owned by your employer. In that case, your employer, or somebody able to represent the company (usually a VP or higher) needs to sign the corporate version of the Contributor Licensing Agreement in order for that contribution to be accepted into GeoTrellis. They will need to include the names of the developers (you and any others who may contribute from your employer) who are able to submit contributions on behalf of the employer. That list can be updated as new people are employed or others leave.
You may still sign an individual CLA, whether or not your employer signs one. Not all the work you do will necessarily belong to your employer, and we still need permission to license your individual contributions. If you have signed an individual CLA, but not a corporate one, be very careful about submitting contributions you have made. We cannot accept anything that you do not have the rights to license in the first place or anything that includes code that belongs to your employer. Similarly, if you are a consultant who may be creating GeoTrellis patches as part of a job, make sure you and your employer understand who owns the rights to the code. Please only submit work to which you own the rights. The CLA is a legal declaration by you that you have the right to grant such a license for your contributions. It is up to you to make sure that is true.
Yes, many open source communities and projects use Contributor License Agreements, including the Apache Software Foundation, the Open Geospatial Foundation and the Eclipse Foundation.