Corvin

June 28, 2026 · View on GitHub

Version 3.1 — 2026-05-27

Thank you for contributing to Corvin. This document is the Contributor License Agreement ("Agreement") between you ("Contributor") and Silvio Jurk ("Maintainer", silvio.jurk@gmail.com).

It is intentionally short. The two clauses that matter are §2 (Outbound License) and §3 (Relicense Right). Everything else mirrors industry- standard CLAs (Apache Software Foundation ICLA, Google CLA).

By opening a pull request against this repository, by adding a Signed-off-by: trailer to your commits, or by otherwise intentionally submitting work for inclusion in the Project, you accept this Agreement.

1. Definitions

"Contribution" — any original work of authorship intentionally submitted for inclusion in the Project, in any form (code, docs, configuration, tests, etc.).

"Project" — the CorvinOS source repository at github.com/CorvinLabs/CorvinOS (formerly github.com/veegee82/Corvin and github.com/veegee82/corvinOS; any future successor location) plus all software it produces.

2. Outbound License (Apache-2.0)

You license each Contribution to the Maintainer and to every recipient of the Project under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (see the LICENSE file). The copyright and patent grants of Apache §§ 2 and 3 apply.

This mirrors Apache § 5 ("inbound = outbound") and would apply even without this Agreement. It is restated here for clarity.

3. Relicense Right (the load-bearing clause)

You additionally grant the Maintainer a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, irrevocable right to relicense your Contribution, in whole or in part, under any of the following:

(a) any license approved by the Open Source Initiative;

(b) any source-available license (Business Source License, Functional Source License, Fair Source License, Elastic License v2, or any license of comparable structure);

(c) a commercial license offered to third parties who cannot or do not wish to comply with the open-source terms.

This right exists so the Maintainer can adapt the Project's license to future market conditions (e.g. hyperscaler-clone defence, enterprise procurement requirements) without needing to coordinate with every past Contributor. You retain the right to use your own Contribution under Apache-2.0 indefinitely. The relicense right is non-exclusive — it grants additional licensing options to the Maintainer; it does not strip any rights from you.

A relicense decision does not affect any version of the Project already published under Apache-2.0; those releases remain Apache-2.0 forever. Only future releases would carry the new license, at the Maintainer's discretion.

4. Representations

You represent that:

  1. You are legally entitled to grant the above licenses. If your employer has rights to intellectual property that includes your Contributions, you have received permission, your employer has waived such rights, or your employer has executed a separate Corporate CLA with the Maintainer.

  2. Each Contribution is your original creation (or, if not, you submit it separately marked as third-party work with full source and license details).

  3. Your Contribution does not knowingly include patents, trademarks, or other restrictions that would prevent the licenses in §§ 2–3 from being effective.

5. No Warranty

You provide Contributions on an "AS IS" basis, without warranties of any kind, express or implied. The Maintainer is under no obligation to integrate, distribute, or otherwise use any Contribution.

6. How to sign

You sign by any one of the following acts. Each constitutes an offer and acceptance (Angebot und Annahme) under § 145 ff. BGB and the governing law of § 7. One acceptance per contributor covers all current and future Contributions to this Project.

Explicit methods (preferred — creates a clear audit trail):

  • A PR comment or issue comment containing the exact sentence: I have read CLA.md and accept its terms.
  • An email to silvio.jurk@gmail.com with subject CLA acceptance — <Your GitHub handle> and the same sentence in the body.
  • Adding Signed-off-by: Your Name <email> to your commits. This DCO trailer additionally constitutes CLA acceptance for this Project. git commit -s adds it automatically.

Implicit methods (also binding, subject to the conditions below):

  • Opening a pull request against this repository, provided that CLA.md was present in the default branch at the time the PR was opened and the PR body does not contain an explicit opt-out.
  • Pushing commits directly to any branch in this repository (write-access contributors), provided that CLA.md was present in the default branch at the time of the push.

For implicit-method contributions, the Maintainer will request explicit confirmation (a PR/issue comment or email) before the first commercial relicense decision that affects the Contributor's code. The Contributor's continued non-objection after receiving that request constitutes acceptance of §3 for their prior Contributions.

Tracking: The Maintainer records the §6 pre-relicense confirmation request date and acknowledgment status in the Notes column of CLA-SIGNATORIES.md (format: §6-confirmation-sent: YYYY-MM-DD and §6-confirmed: YYYY-MM-DD or pending). Implicit-method contributors who have not received a §6 confirmation request must be contacted before any commercial relicense decision.

All accepted contributors are listed in CLA-SIGNATORIES.md. If your name is not listed and you have contributed, please send the acceptance sentence to the Maintainer's email.

If you wish to revoke a future acceptance, contact the Maintainer at silvio.jurk@gmail.com. Revocation does not retroact on Contributions already merged — the licenses granted on those Contributions are irrevocable as stated in §§ 2–3.

7. Governing law

This Agreement is governed by the laws of the Federal Republic of Germany, without regard to its conflict-of-laws provisions. The exclusive place of jurisdiction for any disputes arising from or in connection with this Agreement is the seat of the Maintainer, to the extent legally permissible.

Why this CLA exists (plain-language explanation)

Corvin is currently Apache-2.0 for maximal adoption. If in the future a major cloud provider clones the Project and offers it as a managed service in competition with the Maintainer's own hosted offering, the Maintainer may switch the license of future releases to a source-available form (e.g. BSL with a 2-year Apache-2.0 change date — the same path Sentry, HashiCorp, and MariaDB MaxScale took).

That move requires the relicense right granted in §3. Without it, each past Contributor would need to individually agree, which is not feasible at scale. The §3 grant is the optionality you give the Maintainer in exchange for the broader stewardship of the Project.

Existing Apache-2.0 releases stay Apache-2.0 forever — your Contribution under Apache-2.0 cannot be retracted from versions already published. The relicense right only affects future versions.

Historical versions

  • v3.1 — 2026-05-27 (this file) — Expanded §6: direct-push and email acceptance added as explicit triggers; SIGNATORIES tracking added; explicit-vs-implicit distinction for German-law clarity.
  • v3.0 — 2026-05-11 — Apache-2.0 + relicense right (§3 added).
  • v2.0 — 2026-05-11 — Apache-2.0 era, no CLA (Apache § 5 only).
  • v1.0 — 2026-05-09 — AGPL-3.0 + Commercial dual-license CLA. No contributor signatures were collected under v1.0.