Contributor Agreement
Noun · Open Source
Definitions
A legal agreement that contributors sign to define how their submitted code or content can be used, licensed, or redistributed by a project or company. It is broader than a specific CLA bot workflow and can cover copyright, patents, or representation of authorship.
In plain English: A legal agreement that explains how a project can use someone’s contributions.
Example: "Large companies often require a contributor agreement before accepting patches into foundation-backed projects."
Related Terms
- Contributor License Agreement
- License Compliance
- Apache Foundation
- CLA Bot
- Codeberg
- Developer Certificate of Origin
- Enterprise Open Source
- First Good Issue
- FreeBSD
- Gitea
- Good First Issue
- Google Summer of Code
- Gratipay
- ICLA
- Maintainer Burnout
- Open Core
- Outreachy
- Package Maintainer
- Peer Production
- Upstream
- Contributor License Agreement
- MIT