# Zond Individual Contributor License Agreement
**Version 1.0 — 9 August 2026**
Thank you for your interest in contributing to Zond ("the Project"), maintained by
Erik Lening ("the Maintainer", "we", "us").
This agreement clarifies the intellectual property license granted with
contributions from any person or entity. It protects you as a contributor, the
Maintainer, and everyone who relies on the Project. **You keep the copyright in
your contribution.** You are not giving your work away; you are giving us
permission to use it.
You accept and agree to these terms for your present and future contributions. If
you are contributing on behalf of a company, see [CLA-ENTITY.md](CLA-ENTITY.md)
instead.
---
## 1. Definitions
**"You"** means the individual who submits a Contribution, or the legal entity
authorised by that individual.
**"Contribution"** means any original work of authorship, including any
modification of or addition to an existing work, that You intentionally submit to
the Project for inclusion in or documentation of any of the products owned or
managed by the Maintainer.
**"Submit"** means any form of electronic, verbal or written communication sent to
the Maintainer or its representatives — including but not limited to pull
requests, issues, patches sent by email, and discussion on mailing lists or issue
trackers — for the purpose of discussing and improving the Project. It excludes
communication that You conspicuously mark, in writing, as **"Not a Contribution"**.
---
## 2. Grant of Copyright License
Subject to the terms of this agreement, You hereby grant to the Maintainer, and to
recipients of software distributed by the Maintainer, a perpetual, worldwide,
non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable copyright license to
reproduce, prepare derivative works of, publicly display, publicly perform,
sublicense and distribute Your Contributions and such derivative works.
**This license expressly includes the right to license and sublicense Your
Contribution under terms of the Maintainer's choosing, including proprietary and
commercial terms, and to relicense the Project as a whole under a different
license.** This is what allows the Project to be offered both as free software
under the GNU Affero General Public License and under separate commercial terms to
organisations that cannot accept the AGPL.
You retain all right, title and interest in Your Contribution. Nothing in this
agreement transfers ownership of Your copyright, and You remain free to use Your
Contribution for any other purpose whatsoever.
### 2.1 Construction under German copyright law
This agreement is governed by German law, which does not permit the transfer of
copyright itself (§ 29(1) UrhG). The grant above therefore takes effect as the
grant of a **non-exclusive right of use** (*einfaches Nutzungsrecht*) under § 31
UrhG, unlimited in time, territory and content, covering every known type of use.
You expressly consent, for the purposes of **§ 35 UrhG**, to the Maintainer
granting further rights of use in Your Contribution to third parties — including
exclusive rights and rights on proprietary terms — without needing to seek Your
approval in each case. This consent is the operative mechanism behind the
relicensing right described above.
The grant is non-exclusive precisely so that You keep the full ability to use,
publish and license Your own Contribution elsewhere.
### 2.2 No remuneration
You acknowledge that You make Your Contribution voluntarily and **without
remuneration**, in exchange for the commitments in section 4 and for the benefit
of participating in a free software project, and that no payment of any kind is
owed to You for it. Your statutory rights under §§ 32, 32a UrhG are not waivable
in advance and remain unaffected by this acknowledgement.
---
## 3. Grant of Patent License
Subject to the terms of this agreement, You hereby grant to the Maintainer, and to
recipients of software distributed by the Maintainer, a perpetual, worldwide,
non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable (except as stated in this
section) patent license to make, have made, use, offer to sell, sell, import and
otherwise transfer the Contribution, where such license applies only to those
patent claims licensable by You that are necessarily infringed by Your
Contribution alone or by combination of Your Contribution with the Project to
which it was submitted.
If any entity institutes patent litigation against You or any other entity —
including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit — alleging that Your
Contribution, or the Project to which it was submitted, constitutes direct or
contributory patent infringement, then any patent licenses granted to that entity
under this agreement for that Contribution or Project shall terminate as of the
date such litigation is filed.
---
## 4. Our Commitment to You
In return for the rights You grant above, the Maintainer commits that:
1. Your Contribution will be made available in a version of the Project
distributed under the GNU Affero General Public License version 3 or later, or
under another license approved by the Open Source Initiative. The Project will
not become closed-source-only.
2. You will be credited in the Project's commit history, and Your authorship will
not be misrepresented.
---
## 5. Your Representations
You represent that:
1. You are legally entitled to grant the above licenses.
2. Each of Your Contributions is Your original creation, or You have the necessary
rights to submit it under the terms of this agreement.
3. If Your employer has rights to intellectual property that You create — which
includes work You do for that employer — You have received permission to make
Contributions on behalf of that employer, or Your employer has waived such
rights, or Your employer has executed the
[Entity CLA](CLA-ENTITY.md) with the Maintainer.
4. Your Contribution does not knowingly violate any third party's copyrights,
trademarks, patents or other intellectual property rights.
---
## 6. Third-Party Work
Should You wish to submit work that is not Your original creation, You may submit
it separately from any Contribution, identifying the complete details of its
source and of any license or other restriction (including related patents,
trademarks and license agreements) of which You are personally aware. Mark such
submissions conspicuously as **"Submitted on behalf of a third party: [named
here]"**.
---
## 7. Support and Warranty Disclaimer
You are not expected to provide support for Your Contributions, except to the
extent You desire to do so. Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in
writing, You provide Your Contributions **on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES
OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND**, either express or implied, including without
limitation any warranties or conditions of TITLE, NON-INFRINGEMENT,
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
---
## 8. Notification
You agree to notify the Maintainer of any facts or circumstances of which You
become aware that would make these representations inaccurate in any respect.
---
## 9. Governing Law and Miscellaneous
This agreement is governed by the laws of the **Federal Republic of Germany**,
excluding its conflict-of-law provisions and excluding the United Nations
Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods.
Insofar as You are a merchant (*Kaufmann*), a legal person under public law or a
special fund under public law, the exclusive place of jurisdiction for all disputes
arising out of this agreement is the Maintainer's seat in North Rhine-Westphalia,
Germany. If You are a consumer, the mandatory consumer-protection and jurisdiction
rules of Your country of residence remain unaffected.
If any provision of this agreement is or becomes invalid or unenforceable, the
validity of the remaining provisions is unaffected, and the invalid provision shall
be replaced by one that comes closest to its economic purpose. This agreement
constitutes the entire agreement between the parties concerning Contributions and
supersedes any prior understanding on that subject.
---
## How to Sign
You do not need to sign this by hand. When you open your first pull request, the
**CLA Assistant** bot will post a comment asking you to confirm. Reply to that
comment with exactly:
```
I have read the CLA Document and I hereby sign the CLA
```
Your signature — your GitHub username, the pull request, and a timestamp — is
recorded in the Project's signature store. You only need to do this once.
If you would prefer to sign by email instead, send your full name, GitHub
username, email address and the sentence above to **licensing@zond.rs**.
---
*Contact: licensing@zond.rs · This agreement is adapted from the Apache Software
Foundation Individual Contributor License Agreement v2.0.*