Fiduciary Licensing Agreement

At the General Assembly of KDE e.V. in August 2008 the membership voted to adopt a Fiduciary Licensing Agreement as the preferred form for assigning copyright to KDE e.V.

Copyright assignment is a personal act. It is entirely optional and at an individual developer, contributor or copyright holder's discretion whether to assign copyright to KDE e.V. or not. While there are various legal avenues available to do such an assignment, a Fiduciary License Agreement is one that preserves the spirit of Free Software and is easy to administer.

To assign KDE e.V. as your fiduciary for your contributions to KDE, you can:

  • print, sign, and then send it by post to the KDE e.V. office,
  • print, sign, scan, and then email the scan to the board of KDE e.V., kde-ev-board@kde.org,
  • modify the document to fill in the blanks (the FLA is not available as a PDF form, unfortunately), then sign digitally and send the signed PDF to the board of KDE e.V., kde-ev-board@kde.org.

Versions of the FLA

The text of the FLA and the relicensing document has changed over time. Only the text of the particular document you may have signed applies. Most changes are of minor importance, but they are documented here.

Version 2.0

Version 2.0 is the current FLA. New signatories are encouraged to use this one because of its up-to-date language. The FLA 2.0 is a single document without addenda or appendices.

The Fiduciary Licensing Agreement 2.0 was obtained from the Contributor Agreements website.

  • 2.0 Initial version from the Contributor Agreements site.

Version 1.3

Versions prior to 1.3 were not used by KDE e.V. and there are no signatories of versions prior to 1.3. This version of the FLA is still available as an option, at your personal choice.

The forms (FLA 1.3.5 and FRP 1.3.5, PDF) for the Fiduciary Licensing Agreement are available from the resources page.

The Fiduciary Relicensing Policy (FRP) restricts the ways in which KDE e.V. can relicense the code for which it holds the copyright.

The Fiduciary Licensing Agreement was created in cooperation with the Free Software Foundation Europe.

  • 1.3.5 Unified the prefab and non-prefab document.
  • 1.3.4 Updated post address of KDE e.V.
  • 1.3.3 Updated post address of KDE e.V.
  • 1.3.2 (with associated FRP version 1.3.1) Added FLA with boilerplate text for KDE SVN account holders.
  • 1.3.1 Clarify text and remove some licenses from FRP that we don't actually want to use.
  • 1.3 Clarify text by referring to specific version of KDE e.V. charter.
  • 1.2 Changes of address.
  • 1.2 Changes in the way the document is created.
  • 1.1 Initial version (the FSFE document is considered version 1.0).

Signatories of the FLA

A lot of KDE contributors have signed the FLA. Among them are the following people alphabetically by first name (the numbers following the names indicate the version of the FLA that they have signed):

  • Aaron Seigo (1.3.1)
  • Adriaan de Groot (1.3.1)
  • Adrián Chaves Fernández (1.3.3)
  • Aitor Pazos Ibarzabal (1.3.3)
  • Àlex Fiestas (1.3.3)
  • Aleix Pol Gonzalez (1.3.3)
  • André Wöbbeking (1.3.3)
  • Andreas Cord-Landwehr (1.3.3)
  • Andreas Hartmetz (1.3.2)
  • Bhushan Shah (1.3.4)
  • Casper van Donderen (1.3.2)
  • Chani Armitage (1.3.2)
  • Christoph Cullmann (1.3.5)
  • Claus Christensen (1.3.4)
  • Cornelius Schumacher (1.3.1)
  • Cristian Tibirna (1.3.3)
  • Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen (1.3.3)
  • Daniel Laidig (1.3.3)
  • Daniel Vrátil (1.3.5)
  • David Edmundson (1.3.4)
  • Dominik Haumann (1.3.2)
  • Dominique Devriese (1.3.4)
  • Eckhart Wörner (1.3.2)
  • Elvis Angelaccio (1.3.5)
  • Franck Arrecot (1.3.4)
  • Frederik Gladhorn (1.3.4)
  • Harald Fernengel (1.3.3)
  • Ingo Klöcker (1.3.2)
  • Ivan Cukić (1.3.3)
  • John Layt (1.3.3)
  • Kevin Funk (1.3.4)
  • Kevin Krammer (1.3.3)
  • Kévin Ottens (1.3.4)
  • Luigi Toscano (1.3.3)
  • Lukas Sommer (1.3.3)
  • Lydia Pintscher (1.3.2)
  • Marco Martin (1.3.3)
  • Mark Gaiser (1.3.4)
  • Martin Gräßlin (1.3.3)
  • Matěj Laitl (1.3.4)
  • Matthias Ettrich (1.3.2)
  • Michael Bohlender (1.3.4)
  • Milian Wolff (1.3.2)
  • Miquel Canes Gonzalez (1.3.3)
  • Oswald Buddenhagen (1.3.2)
  • Pablo Rodriguez Perez (2.0)
  • Pradeepto Bhattacharya (1.3.5)
  • Rafael Fernández López (1.3.2)
  • Rajeesh K V (1.3.4)
  • Reinhold Kainhofer (1.3.1)
  • Riccardo Iaconelli (1.3.3)
  • Rishab Arora (1.3.4)
  • Rohan Garg (1.3.3)
  • Sandro Knauß (1.3.4)
  • Scarlett Clark (1.3.4)
  • Sebastian Kügler (1.3.1)
  • Sébastien Renard (1.3.3)
  • Shantanu Tushar (1.3.4)
  • Simon Wächter (1.3.4)
  • Stefan Derkits (1.3.4)
  • Sune Vuorela (1.3.5)
  • Teo Mrnjavac (1.3.4)
  • Till Adam (1.3.2)
  • Torrie Fischer (1.3.3)
  • Valorie Zimmermann (1.3.4)
  • Vishesh Handa (1.3.3)
  • Volker Krause (1.3.5)
  • Yifan Zhu (2.0)