GENIVI Alliance Entity Contributors License Agreement

The GENIVI Alliance Entity Contributors License Agreement (CLA) is the Board-approved document to support contribution of original code from GENIVI members. The CLA must be completed by a GENIVI Member and signed by a person with authority to act on behalf of the member company. The benefits of using a CLA include:

  • Clearly states what is required of the contributing company and of GENIVI
  • Serves as a license for the code until the code is accepted by GENIVI and a FOSS license is applied
  • Allows a member company to "sign once" and use for multiple contributions
  • Allows a member company to identify individuals who have authority to submit code on behalf of the company.

To properly execute a CLA, a member company must do the following:

  • Complete all company information fields on page 4
  • Have signed and dated by an person authorized to act on behalf of the company
  • Identify at least one individual on page 5 who is authorized to submit a code contribution on behalf of the company.

Note that GENIVI will limit submitters of code to only those listed on page 5. Code will not be accepted from a company representative not listed on page 5. If this list changes over time, the member should submit updates to code-contribution-help@mail.genivi.org.

Completed CLAs should be scanned and emailed to code-contribution-help@mail.genivi.org. Within a couple of days, an acknowledgement email will be returned indicating receipt of the CLA. Soon after that an email dialog will be initiated to communicate acceptance of the CLA and instructions on when and where to place contributed code.

GENIVI has defined a process for evaluating and accepting contributed code. This process is defined on the Code Contribution Process pages of the GENIVI Wiki. Only members may access these pages. If you have questions about the process, please contact code-contribution-help@mail.genivi.org.

Third-Party IP

A quick note about code containing third-party intellectual property (IP). The CLA is intended to cover original code provided by a GENIVI member. It has become common practice that components may "reuse" code snippets from other sources. While this is common practice, GENIVI generally discourages including third-party code in member contributed code as it limits GENIVI's capabilities to exercise it rights to license accepted contributions with a FOSS license.

If included in member contribution, third-party code shall be handled as follows:

  • any third-party dependency (e.g. linking to glib) shall not be included in code, instead it needs to be declared with the contribution including the version required. The packages referenced will be integrated later by a group or team within GENIVI;
  • any third-party code incorporated into the contribution needs to be declared together with the relevant license governing it (i.e. "inline code") along with the copyright owner of the code;
  • GENIVI may reject contributions with third-party IP (in cases where the above dependencies cannot be satisfied or a code scan shows issues with code included etc.).

If there are questions about code containing third-party IP, please contact code-contribution-help@mail.genivi.org.