Contribution Policy

 

The latest ratified version of this document can be found at https://www.shibboleth.net/consortium/documents/

All contributions of code or other intellectual property to the Shibboleth Project (hereafter referred to as "the project") must be made in accordance with the following terms:

Any source code or other intellectual property produced for, or donated to, the project must either:

  • be made available under the terms of the Apache 2.0 License (source code) or the CC Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License (non-source code) OR

  • be produced in conjunction with a contract stipulating that all Consortium Members be given a perpetual, world-wide, irrevocable, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, fully transferable copyright license to reproduce, prepare derivative works of, publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense, and distribute the Contribution(s) and such derivative works OR

  • be produced in conjunction with a contract stipulating terms the Consortium Board accepts as substantially equivalent OR

  • be provided in conjunction with a formal contribution agreement stipulating terms the Consortium Board accepts as substantially equivalent

An example of the latter would be any contribution provided with an Internet2 Individual or Company Contributor SLA, which have historically formed the basis of much of the project code base.

Further, contributors must warrant:

  • that they have the legal authority to provide the work under the above terms AND

  • that contributors whose work may be owned by their employer have received permission to contribute under the above terms on their employer's behalf or that ownership rights have been waived by the employer AND

  • that any license or restriction (including, but not limited to, related patents, trademarks and trade secrets) applying to any part of the contribution, and that is known at the time of contribution, has accompanied it

Contributors also agree to notify the Shibboleth Project of any information discovered subsequent to contribution that would render the above warranties inaccurate.

Contributions need not include a transfer of actual copyright, and contributors may request that an appropriate copyright notice be included with any distributed work containing the contribution. No other identification of copyright can be required, including but not limited to specific copyright attachments to the contribution itself as it may be found within works distributed by the project or distributed by other recipients of such works.

The above does not provide for a specific legal agreement between a contributor and the project, but any contribution will be accepted by the Project Management Committee only when compliant with it.