Tvheadend

h1. Contributors

For general details about [[Development]] on Tvheadend, it's best you read the [[Development]] pages of the wiki. This page gives some specific details regarding licensing in relation to contributions.

h2. License Agreement

Anyone wishing to submit code to Tvheadend is required to sign a [[CLA|Contributor License Agreement]].

The reason that we've chosen to do this was mainly started by a desire to change our license to a more permissive one.

This required all contributors be contacted and agreement sought from them. Since we were already going to all this trouble we have decided to take the next logical step and ask that all of prior and future contributors sign a license agreement.

This helps the project by ensuring that we have full rights to use the code and that if necessary we can re-license, within the terms of the agreement, if we believe there to be a benefit to the project as a whole.

This has not been done for any commercial interest or personal gain associated with any members of [[Team|The Team]]. It has been done purely on the basis that we believe it will benefit the project in the long run.

h2. Who is the agreement with

Legally speaking, the agreement must be with a legal entity. As such this pretty much means either an individual or a company (including charities).

We did consider having the agreement be signed to [[Andreas]] as the original author. But decided this was not the proper approach and therefore have decided to set up a company.

It is this company, [[Foundation|Tvheadend Foundation CIC]], that you will be entering an agreement with.

Basically the Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation who's sole purpose is to act as custodian of the projects assets, basically:

* The code

* The license agreements

* Donations.

For more details, you can read the [[Foundation|Foundation page]].

h2. Signing

For full details on on to sign, please read the [[CLA|CLA page]].

However before you sign the [[CLA]] we strongly urge you to read it to and ensure you are happy with what you are agreeing to.

However to summarise, this is essentially what you will be agreeing to:

* You affirm that you have the right to provide the contribution (i.e. it's your own work).

* You grant the project a perpetual, non-exclusive license to use the contribution.

* You grant the project rights to change the outbound license that we use to distribute the code.

> * There is a limit clause, that states we can only use an approved Open Source Initiative (OSI) license. I.e. we cannot produce a closed source version.

* You retain full ownership (copyright) of your submission and are free to do with it as you please.

If you wish to contribute to the project, but feel you cannot sign the agreement, please contact us at [email protected].