Version 2.0. The agreement below is the Harmony Individual Contributor License Agreement, version 1.0 — an off-the-shelf standard form published by Project Harmony in 2011 and used unmodified by many dual-licensed projects. Its operative text is reproduced here word for word. Nothing in it was drafted for omul.
Version 1.0 of this file was a bespoke agreement written for this project. It was replaced on 2026-09-07, before anybody had signed anything, for one reason: a standard form is one that contributors have met before and that does not need a lawyer read before it can be used.
What was filled in. The Harmony template ships with bracketed blanks and, in §2.3, five alternative clauses for the adopter to choose between. Those choices, and no other change, are:
| Blank | Filled with |
|---|---|
[PROJECT_NAME] |
omul |
[SUBMISSION_INSTRUCTIONS] |
How to sign, at the end of this file |
[NONOWNER_INSTRUCTIONS] |
If you do not own all of it, at the end of this file |
[JURISDICTION] |
Germany |
[LIST_OF_MEDIA_LICENSES] |
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0), Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) |
§2.2, optional [or Your Affiliates] |
omitted — this is the individual form |
| §2.3, one of five options | Option Five |
| Paper signature block | replaced by the electronic submission the template's [SUBMISSION_INSTRUCTIONS] blank exists for |
Why Option Five, since it is the choice that decides what this agreement is for: omul is dual-licensed, AGPL-3.0-only for everyone or a separate commercial agreement, and only Option Five permits the second half. It carries its own condition in the same sentence — Us licensing a Contribution commercially is conditioned on also licensing it under the terms the Material is under on the day it was submitted. That is what keeps a contribution free software.
"Us" and "We" in the text below mean Enrico Scherlies, the copyright holder in omul, and successors in the Project.
This section is a summary and a reading aid. It is not part of the agreement, and where it and the agreement disagree, the agreement is what binds.
omul is dual-licensed: AGPL-3.0-only for everyone, or a separate commercial agreement (LICENSE-COMMERCIAL). Only the holder of the rights in a line of code can offer that second half over it. Without an agreement from you, your contribution reaches this project under the AGPL alone, the commercial half can never cover it, and there is no fix after the fact short of asking you individually or deleting the code.
- You keep your copyright (§2.1(a)). This agreement is a license, not an assignment. You retain ownership of the copyright in your contribution and the same rights to use or license it that you would have had without signing — including in a competing product.
- You grant Us a broad, non-exclusive, sublicensable license (§2.1(b), and the matching patent license in §2.2) to use your contribution as part of omul.
- Your contribution stays available under omul's open license (§2.3, Option Five). We may also license it commercially, but only on condition that we go on licensing it under the terms omul is under on the day you submitted it — AGPL-3.0-only, today.
- You are not promising to maintain anything, you give no warranty (§4), and We are not obliged to use what you send (§2.5).
If you cannot make the confirmations in §3 — most commonly because your employer owns what you write at work — read If you do not own all of it below before you sign.
Thank you for your interest in contributing to omul ("We" or "Us").
This contributor agreement ("Agreement") documents the rights granted by contributors to Us. To make this document effective, please sign it and send it to Us by mail, email, fax, or electronic submission, following the instructions in How to sign below. This is a legally binding document, so please read it carefully before agreeing to it. The Agreement may cover more than one software project managed by Us.
"You" means the individual who Submits a Contribution to Us.
"Contribution" means any work of authorship that is Submitted by You to Us in which You own or assert ownership of the Copyright. If You do not own the Copyright in the entire work of authorship, please follow the instructions in If you do not own all of it below.
"Copyright" means all rights protecting works of authorship owned or controlled by You, including copyright, moral and neighboring rights, as appropriate, for the full term of their existence including any extensions by You.
"Material" means the work of authorship which is made available by Us to third parties. When this Agreement covers more than one software project, the Material means the work of authorship to which the Contribution was Submitted. After You Submit the Contribution, it may be included in the Material.
"Submit" means any form of electronic, verbal, or written communication sent to Us or our representatives, including but not limited to electronic mailing lists, source code control systems, and issue tracking systems that are managed by, or on behalf of, Us for the purpose of discussing and improving the Material, but excluding communication that is conspicuously marked or otherwise designated in writing by You as "Not a Contribution."
"Submission Date" means the date on which You Submit a Contribution to Us.
"Effective Date" means the date You execute this Agreement or the date You first Submit a Contribution to Us, whichever is earlier.
"Media" means any portion of a Contribution which is not software.
(a) You retain ownership of the Copyright in Your Contribution and have the same rights to use or license the Contribution which You would have had without entering into the Agreement.
(b) To the maximum extent permitted by the relevant law, You grant to Us a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, transferable, royalty-free, irrevocable license under the Copyright covering the Contribution, with the right to sublicense such rights through multiple tiers of sublicensees, to reproduce, modify, display, perform and distribute the Contribution as part of the Material; provided that this license is conditioned upon compliance with Section 2.3.
For patent claims including, without limitation, method, process, and apparatus claims which You own, control or have the right to grant, now or in the future, You grant to Us a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, transferable, royalty-free, irrevocable patent license, with the right to sublicense these rights to multiple tiers of sublicensees, to make, have made, use, sell, offer for sale, import and otherwise transfer the Contribution and the Contribution in combination with the Material (and portions of such combination). This license is granted only to the extent that the exercise of the licensed rights infringes such patent claims; and provided that this license is conditioned upon compliance with Section 2.3.
Based on the grant of rights in Sections 2.1 and 2.2, if We include Your Contribution in a Material, We may license the Contribution under any license, including copyleft, permissive, commercial, or proprietary licenses. As a condition on the exercise of this right, We agree to also license the Contribution under the terms of the license or licenses which We are using for the Material on the Submission Date.
In addition, We may use the following licenses for Media in the Contribution: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0), Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) (including any right to adopt any future version of a license if permitted).
If moral rights apply to the Contribution, to the maximum extent permitted by law, You waive and agree not to assert such moral rights against Us or our successors in interest, or any of our licensees, either direct or indirect.
You acknowledge that We are not obligated to use Your Contribution as part of the Material and may decide to include any Contribution We consider appropriate.
Any rights not expressly licensed under this section are expressly reserved by You.
You confirm that:
(a) You have the legal authority to enter into this Agreement.
(b) You own the Copyright and patent claims covering the Contribution which are required to grant the rights under Section 2.
(c) The grant of rights under Section 2 does not violate any grant of rights which You have made to third parties, including Your employer. If You are an employee, You have had Your employer approve this Agreement or sign the Entity version of this document. If You are less than eighteen years old, please have Your parents or guardian sign the Agreement.
(d) You have followed the instructions in If you do not own all of it below, if You do not own the Copyright in the entire work of authorship Submitted.
EXCEPT FOR THE EXPRESS WARRANTIES IN SECTION 3, THE CONTRIBUTION IS PROVIDED "AS IS". MORE PARTICULARLY, ALL EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, ANY IMPLIED WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NON-INFRINGEMENT ARE EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMED BY YOU TO US. TO THE EXTENT THAT ANY SUCH WARRANTIES CANNOT BE DISCLAIMED, SUCH WARRANTY IS LIMITED IN DURATION TO THE MINIMUM PERIOD PERMITTED BY LAW.
TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, IN NO EVENT WILL YOU BE LIABLE FOR ANY LOSS OF PROFITS, LOSS OF ANTICIPATED SAVINGS, LOSS OF DATA, INDIRECT, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, CONSEQUENTIAL AND EXEMPLARY DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THIS AGREEMENT REGARDLESS OF THE LEGAL OR EQUITABLE THEORY (CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE) UPON WHICH THE CLAIM IS BASED.
6.1 This Agreement will be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of Germany excluding its conflicts of law provisions. Under certain circumstances, the governing law in this section might be superseded by the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods ("UN Convention") and the parties intend to avoid the application of the UN Convention to this Agreement and, thus, exclude the application of the UN Convention in its entirety to this Agreement.
6.2 This Agreement sets out the entire agreement between You and Us for Your Contributions to Us and overrides all other agreements or understandings.
6.3 If You or We assign the rights or obligations received through this Agreement to a third party, as a condition of the assignment, that third party must agree in writing to abide by all the rights and obligations in the Agreement.
6.4 The failure of either party to require performance by the other party of any provision of this Agreement in one situation shall not affect the right of a party to require such performance at any time in the future. A waiver of performance under a provision in one situation shall not be considered a waiver of the performance of the provision in the future or a waiver of the provision in its entirety.
6.5 If any provision of this Agreement is found void and unenforceable, such provision will be replaced to the extent possible with a provision that comes closest to the meaning of the original provision and which is enforceable. The terms and conditions set forth in this Agreement shall apply notwithstanding any failure of essential purpose of this Agreement or any limited remedy to the maximum extent possible under law.
This section is the [SUBMISSION_INSTRUCTIONS] the agreement refers to. It is
the mechanism, not a term of the agreement.
Open the pull request first. A bot checks whether every author of the commits in it has signed, and comments with the exact sentence to reply with if someone has not. Replying with that sentence, from Your own GitHub account, is the signature — there is no form to print, and nothing to email.
The sentence is:
I have read the CLA Document and I hereby sign the CLA
You sign once. Every later pull request from the same account is covered, for as long as this version of the agreement is the one in force. A new version is not retroactive: what You signed is the document the check linked to at the time, and a signature recorded against one version is never counted as a signature against another.
If You are signing on behalf of an entity, this is the wrong document — the
Harmony Entity Contributor License Agreement is the matching form, and it is
handled by email rather than by the bot. If GitHub is not a route You can
use, or You are sending an employer's approval under §3(c), write to
support@hyhyve.com with omul CLA in the subject line. It is the same
monitored mailbox that answers licensing, trademark and security mail.
This section is the [NONOWNER_INSTRUCTIONS] §1 and §3(d) refer to.
If any part of what You are submitting is not Yours — a snippet from elsewhere, a vendored file, generated output that reproduces its source, or anything Your employer or client owns — do not submit it as part of Your Contribution. Open a separate pull request for it, say in the description exactly which files or lines are affected, name the license each one is under and who holds the copyright, and leave the decision on whether it can be included to Us. A contribution that mixes the two cannot be accepted, because the grant in §2 covers only what You own.
Your signature is stored as a public record in this repository: Your GitHub username and account id, the pull request and comment it came from, and the timestamp. That record is what a future licensee relies on, so it is kept for as long as the Project exists and is not deleted on request — it is the evidence that the grant in §2 was made. No other personal data is collected by the signing process, and nothing is passed to a third party beyond GitHub, which is already hosting the repository You are contributing to.
For anything else about this document, write to support@hyhyve.com.
The agreement in this file is the Harmony Individual Contributor License Agreement 1.0, by Project Harmony, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. The blanks filled in and the §2.3 option chosen are listed at the top of this file.