WARNING: This is the _old_ Lustre wiki, and it is in the process of being retired. The information found here is all likely to be out of date. Please search the new wiki for more up to date information.
Contribution Policy
Before you can contribute code to Lustre or obtain write access to the CVS repository, you need to sign and return our Contributor Agreement to lustre-ca@sun.com. We require this step for several reasons:
- We need to make sure that you are only contributing code that you own. By certifying that you wrote the code (and that you control the rights), you take legal responsibility for your contribution.
- By agreeing to Joint Copyright, you make it easier for us to protect the project and company from license violations. Only the copyright holder is empowered to act against violations (see the FSF's comments about this topic).
- By agreeing, you also make it possible to continue to sell and distribute Lustre under other licenses, including non-free licenses. This business model is what pays the bills, allowing us to maintain and improve Lustre, release the code under an open source license, and participate in open development (which, generally speaking, pays few of the bills).
Because you remain a copyright holder of what you wrote, you can use the code you contributed in almost any fashion. Of course, this only applies to the software that you contribute, not software written by others.
We will gladly acknowledge your authorship in the source code. Our point is not to try to take credit for your work. If you make a substantial contribution, please update the boilerplate at the top of the source file as part of your patch.
Finally, if you write software for a living (or attend a university), there is a good chance that your organization owns all of the software that you create. In this case, you have three options:
- Get an officer or authorized representative of the organization to contribute the software.
- Get an officer or authorized representative of the organization to waive its rights to your software, so that you can contribute it yourself. In this case, please enclose a short waiver signed by the officer.
- Do not contribute the software.
You are responsible for making sure that you control the rights to the software before you contribute it. If there is any doubt, please consult the organization or an attorney. If you ever find that you contributed software that you shouldn't have for any reason, please notify us right away.
