BetterDesk/docs/development/CONTRIBUTOR-LICENSING.md

Contributor licensing and provenance

BetterDesk is distributed under AGPL-3.0 as described in LICENSE. This document records the maintainer policy for contributions; it is not legal advice.

Copyright and project control

The copyright notice in LICENSE identifies the project copyright holder, but it does not automatically transfer copyright in every later contribution to UNITRONIX. A contributor normally retains copyright in original code they write unless a separate written agreement says otherwise.

Co-authored-by records authorship. It is not a copyright assignment, a license grant beyond the project license, or a promise of exclusive ownership. Do not invent an email address for this trailer.

When UNITRONIX does not have an assignment, preserve the contributor's copyright and AGPL treatment instead of claiming exclusive ownership. Record the source and the actual use in Contributor attributions.

When UNITRONIX specifically needs exclusive control of a contribution, obtain a written copyright assignment or an appropriate contributor agreement before accepting code. Keep that agreement outside the public repository and record its reference in the maintainer's contribution register.

Direct contribution and clean-room paths

There are two fair and reviewable paths:

• Direct contribution: preserve the contributor's copyright, provenance, AGPL license, and attribution. A pull request is not a copyright assignment.
• Clean-room implementation: use only the reviewed specification, observable behavior, and independently written test vectors; credit the source for the report or design, not as an author of code they did not write.

When an external patch is not accepted directly:

1. The specification role records the problem, public behavior, security invariants, and independently written test vectors.
2. The implementation role receives that specification, not the external patch, source-derived comments, copied tests, or generated artifacts.
3. The implementation is written independently against the BetterDesk architecture and reviewed for provenance before merge.
4. The external reporter is credited for the report, design input, or test scenario only when that is what they supplied.

Bug reports, requirements, protocol observations, and test ideas do not by themselves transfer copyright in implementation code. Do not copy an external PR's code, comments, tests, generated output, or distinctive structure into a clean-room implementation.

AGPL obligations

This policy does not add proprietary restrictions to AGPL-covered code. Conveyed BetterDesk modifications must preserve the applicable AGPL notices, source availability, and remote-network source offer requirements. A commercial grant or dual license may be offered only for material whose copyright and third-party permissions UNITRONIX actually controls.

Before merging an externally derived implementation, maintainers must record:

• the source issue/PR and what was actually used;
• whether code was directly accepted, rewritten clean-room, or supplied under a written assignment/agreement;
• applicable copyright and license notices;
• the intended attribution in CHANGELOG.md or release notes.