Contributor Agreements

Why do contributors contribute? There are certainly as many answers to that question as there are contributors. But one thing is certain: People contribute to open source projects whose goals they share. There is usually camaraderie among project members, whether the project is structured as a loose confederation, a formal nonprofit corporation, or a corporate-sponsored activity. When camaraderie fails—for either technical or personal reasons—projects may fork into rival projects. Open source contributors are free to join either fork or leave altogether. Such forks, by the way, have proven to be very rare in open source projects.

Contributors may leave a project but their contributions remain. Once software is made available ...

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