ZHAC Contributor License Agreement

May 12, 2026 · View on GitHub

By contributing to ZHAC, You ("Contributor") agree to the terms below for each Contribution You submit to the project.

This agreement is adapted from the Apache Software Foundation Individual Contributor License Agreement (ICLA) v2.2, modified for ZHAC. It is a grant of rights — it is not an assignment. You keep copyright in Your Contributions.

1. Definitions

  • "Contribution" — any work of authorship, including any modifications or additions to an existing work, intentionally submitted by You to the project for inclusion in, or documentation of, ZHAC. "Submitted" means any form of electronic, verbal, or written communication sent to the Project Maintainer or its representatives, including pull requests, patches, issue comments, and design proposals, but excluding communication that is conspicuously marked as "Not a Contribution."
  • "Project Maintainer" — Evgenij Cjura, current sole copyright holder of the non-contributed portions of ZHAC. The role may be transferred in writing to a successor entity; rights granted under this CLA carry over to that successor.
  • "You" / "Your" — the individual signing this agreement, or the legal entity on whose behalf the individual is authorized to act.

You grant the Project Maintainer, and to recipients of software distributed by the Project 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.

3. Grant of patent license

You grant the Project Maintainer, and to recipients of software distributed by the Project 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 Your Contributions. This 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 ZHAC.

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 ZHAC to which You have contributed, constitutes direct or contributory patent infringement, then any patent licenses granted to that entity under this CLA for that Contribution or work shall terminate as of the date such litigation is filed.

4. Right to relicense

You expressly grant the Project Maintainer the right to distribute Your Contributions under any license of its choosing, now or in the future, including but not limited to:

  • the open-source licenses currently assigned to ZHAC components (Apache-2.0 for embedded/zhc/; AGPL-3.0-or-later for the firmware and Web UI);
  • future open-source licenses, where community circumstances warrant a change;
  • proprietary, commercial, or source-available licenses, in particular for cloud-connected or managed-service offerings built on top of ZHAC.

This relicensing right is what permits the Project Maintainer to offer ZHAC under a dual-license model. It does not revoke Your own right to continue using and distributing Your Contribution under any license You choose.

5. Representations

You represent that:

  1. Each Contribution is either Your original creation, or You have sufficient rights in the Contribution to grant the rights set out in this CLA.
  2. If Your employer(s) has rights to intellectual property You create, You have received permission to make Your Contributions on behalf of that employer, or Your employer has formally waived such rights for Your Contributions to ZHAC (see the separate Entity CLA below).
  3. To the best of Your knowledge, Your Contribution does not infringe any third-party intellectual-property rights.
  4. You will promptly notify the Project Maintainer if You become aware of any circumstance that would make any of the above representations inaccurate.

6. Third-party work

If Your Contribution includes material that is not Your original creation, You will identify the source of that material and the license under which it is offered, and You will not submit material that cannot be contributed under this CLA.

7. No obligation to use

The Project Maintainer is not obligated to accept, use, or redistribute Your Contributions. Submission of a Contribution does not create any employment, consulting, or partnership relationship between You and the Project Maintainer.

8. No support or warranty

You are not expected to provide support for Your Contributions, except to the extent You desire to provide support. Except as required by applicable law, and without limiting any warranties You may have provided with Your Contribution, Your Contributions are provided to the Project Maintainer and recipients "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.

9. How to agree

Agreement is signalled by:

  1. Adding a line with Your full legal name, email, and GitHub handle to CONTRIBUTORS.md, committed as part of the pull request that introduces Your first Contribution.

  2. Including the following statement in the pull-request description of Your first Contribution:

    I have read and agree to the Contributor License Agreement in CLA.md. This and all future contributions I make to this repository are submitted under its terms.

Agreement is per-contributor and persists across all subsequent Contributions; You do not need to re-sign for each PR.

10. Entity contributions

If You are contributing on behalf of a legal entity (employer, company, institution), an authorized representative of that entity must agree to an Entity CLA with substantively the same terms as this ICLA, extended to cover contributions from any designated employees of the entity. Contact the Project Maintainer at zhac.project@gmail.com to arrange this before the entity's first Contribution.

11. Governing law

This CLA is governed by the laws of the jurisdiction in which the Project Maintainer resides, without regard to its conflict-of-laws provisions. If any provision is held unenforceable, the remaining provisions continue in full force.

Based on the Apache Software Foundation Individual Contributor License Agreement v2.2 (https://www.apache.org/licenses/icla.pdf), modified to add the explicit relicensing grant in §4 and the Entity CLA pointer in §10.