Questions? See the MCA FAQ page.

MariaDB Contributor Agreement (MCA)

These terms apply to your contribution of materials to a product or project owned or managed by us ('project'), and set out the intellectual property rights you grant to us (The MariaDB Foundation) in the contributed material. If this contribution is on behalf of a company, the term 'you' will also mean the company you identify below. If you agree to be bound by these terms, fill in the information requested below and provide your signature. Read this agreement carefully before signing.

• The term 'contribution' means any source code, object code, patch, tool, sample, graphic, specification, manual, documentation, or any other material posted, committed or submitted by you to a project. Each submission must explicitly be marked that it's donated under the MCA.

• With respect to any worldwide copyrights, or copyright applications and registrations, in your contribution:

  • you hereby assign to us joint ownership, and to the extent that such assignment is or becomes invalid, ineffective or unenforceable, you hereby grant to us a perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, worldwide, no-charge, royalty-free, unrestricted license to exercise all rights under those copyrights. This includes, at our option, the right to sub-license these same rights to third parties through multiple levels of sub-licensees or other licensing arrangements; you agree that each of us can do all things in relation to your contribution as if each of us were the sole owners, and if one of us makes a derivative work of your contribution, the one who makes the derivative work (or has it made) will be the sole owner of that derivative work;

  • you agree that you will not assert any moral rights in your contribution against us, our licensees or transferees;

  • you agree that we may register a copyright in your contribution and exercise all ownership rights associated with it; and

  • you agree that neither of us has any duty to consult with, obtain the consent of, pay or render an accounting to the other for any use or distribution of your contribution.

• With respect to any patents you grant licenses to without payment to any third party, which would restrict us from using the contributed code as if we would own a shared copyright to it, you hereby grant to us a perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, worldwide, no-charge, royalty-free license to: make, have made, use, sell, offer to sell, import, and otherwise transfer your contribution in whole or in part, alone or in combination with or included in any product, work or materials arising out of the project to which your contribution was submitted, and

  • at our option, to sub-license these same rights to third parties through multiple levels of sub-licensees or other licensing arrangements.

  • Note that you don't give us rights to the patent in any other way than to give us the right to freely use the contributed code in the above ways.

• Except as set out above, you keep all right, title, and interest in your contribution. The rights that you grant to us under these terms are effective on the date you first submitted a contribution to us, even if your submission took place before the date you sign these terms. Any contribution we make available under any license will also be made available under a suitable FSF (Free Software Foundation) or OSI (Open Source Initiative) approved license.

• With respect to your contribution, you represent that:

  • it is an original work and that you can legally grant the rights set out in these terms;

  • it does not to the best of your knowledge violate any third party's copyrights, trademarks, patents, or other intellectual property rights; and

  • you are authorized to sign this contract on behalf of your company (if identified below).

• These terms will be governed by the laws of the Finland. Any choice of law rules will not apply.

Signatory Information

Your user name on GitHub:



Your contact information (Please print clearly): 

Your name:



Your company's name (if applicable):



Mailing address:



Telephone:



Email:

 

Your signature:



Date:

To deliver these terms to us, scan and email to

f o u n d a t i o n [at] m a r i a d b (dot) o r g

MariaDB Contributor Agreement – version 1.0

Questions? See the MCA FAQ page.

_{This page is licensed: CC BY-SA / Gnu FDL}

What is the Intention of the MCA?

1. The original copyright holder and the MariaDB Foundation both get (shared) copyright for the code.

2. Both parties can use their copy independently of each other for any purpose (as if each copy was completely separate and unique).

What if I Don't Want to Submit Code to You Under the MCA?

If you don't like the MCA for code that you want to contribute toMariaDB, the other option is to submit your code under the BSD-new license.

What is the difference between MCA and BSD-new?

The main difference is that MCA is a copyright assignment agreement; you assign the copyright to the MariaDB Foundation (but you retain it too, on your copy of the contribution), while BSD-new is a license; you allow the MariaDB Foundation to use your contribution under specific (albeit rather broad) terms.

When should I use MCA and when should I use BSD-new?

With MCA, the MariaDB Foundation becomes a copyright holder, and it can defend the GPL and pursue violators, protecting its and your rights. This is the same reason why the Free Software Foundationrequires copyright assignment too.

On the other hand, BSD-new is a well known FSF-approved Open Source license.

If you contribute on behalf of your employer, your employer's legal department is most probably already familiar with the BSD-new license. It might be much easier and faster to get them to approve your contribution if you contribute under this license.

If you are an individual contributor (or if your employer is fine with MCA), it makes sense to contribute under MCA, as it will allow the MariaDB Foundation to defend its Open Source way when needed.

For most other practical purposes there is no difference between these two ways of contributing. You keep the copyright to your contribution. And the MariaDB Foundation will be able to use your contribution in MariaDB Server, relicense it (for example, as GPLv2 or GPLv3) or use separately as a patch.

What Will the MariaDB Foundation Do With the Code I Contribute?

The MariaDB Foundation agrees that when it dual licenses code, it will not restrict the way the third party licensee uses the licensed copy of the code nor restrict how they use their own code.

Where Did the MCA Come From?

The MCA is based onSun's Contributor Agreement. We think it is one of the best contributor agreements around!

What's the Difference Between Sun's SCA and the MCA?

Sun's SCA was unclear in a couple of points which we have fixed in the MCA:

• The patent grant has been made clear that it only affects the donated code, not any other code.

• We added a clarification how code is donated; "Each submission must explicitly be marked that it's donated under the MCA"

• We have made a promise in this FAQ how the MariaDB Foundation will Dual-license code. See Monty's blog post "Thoughts about Dual-licensing Open Source software" for a discussion about this.

What Happened to the Monty Program Contributor Agreement?

With the establishment of the MariaDB Foundation, Monty Program Ab transferred all existing signed contributor agreements to the Foundation.

Other Questions?

Question not answered? Subscribe to themaria-developers mailing list and ask there or visit us on our Zulip channel or the #maria IRC channel on.

_{This page is licensed: CC BY-SA / Gnu FDL}