Monty Program Ab Contributor Agreement (MCA) Frequently Asked Questions
What is the intention of the MCA?
- The original copyright holder and Monty Program Ab both get (shared) copyright for the code.
- Both parties can use their copy independently of each other for any purpose (as if each copy was completely separate and unique).
What if I don't want to submit code to you under the MCA?
If you don't like the MCA for code that you want to contribute to MariaDB, the other option is to submit your code under the BSD-new license.
What will Monty Program Ab do with the code I contribute?
Monty Program Ab agrees that when it dual licenses code, it will not restrict the way the third party licensee uses the licensed copy of the code nor restrict how they use their own code.
Where did the MCA come from?
The MCA is based on Sun's Contributor Agreement. We think it is one of the best contributor agreements around!
What's the difference between Sun's SCA and the MCA?
Sun's SCA was unclear in a couple of points which we have fixed in the MCA:
- The patent grant has been made clear that it only affects the donated code, not any other code.
- We added a clarification how code is donated; "Each submission must explicitly be marked that it's donated under the MCA"
- We have made a promise in this FAQ how Monty Program Ab will Dual-license code. See Monty's blog post "Thoughts about Dual-licensing Open Source software" for a discussion about this.
Question not answered? Subscribe to the maria-developers mailing list and ask there or visit us at the #maria IRC channel on freenode.