Project Harmony is an initiative by
Canonical Ltd. about contributor agreements for Open Source software. The aim of the Harmony project is to develop templates of
Contributor License Agreement
A Contributor License Agreement (CLA) defines the terms under which intellectual property has been contributed to a company/project, typically software under an open source license.
Rationale
CLAs can be used to enable vendors to easily purs ...
s for use by
Free and open source software
Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software available under a Software license, license that grants users the right to use, modify, and distribute the software modified or not to everyone free of charge. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term ...
(FOSS) projects.
The Canonical initiative was announced in June 2010 by
Amanda Brock, General Counsel at Canonical. In July 2011, the project released version 1.0 of its agreements templates. Following this release, the project was seen by some as an important step for
intellectual property
Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others. The best-known types are patents, co ...
and
copyright
A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive legal right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, ...
management for open Source software, and by some others as "Making an exception (ie copyright aggregation) the norm".
Contributor agreement options
The project proposes two types of options for the
Contributor License Agreement
A Contributor License Agreement (CLA) defines the terms under which intellectual property has been contributed to a company/project, typically software under an open source license.
Rationale
CLAs can be used to enable vendors to easily purs ...
s:
* Copyright License: The contributors retain the copyright to their contribution.
* Copyright Assignment: The contributors transfer the copyright of their contribution to the project.
See also
*
Free and open source software (FOSS)
*
Contributor License Agreement
A Contributor License Agreement (CLA) defines the terms under which intellectual property has been contributed to a company/project, typically software under an open source license.
Rationale
CLAs can be used to enable vendors to easily purs ...
*
Harmony CLA
References
External links
Project page
Software licensing
Copyright law
Intellectual property activism
Free and open-source software organizations
Canonical (company)
{{measurement-stub