IP Contribution Policy

This Policy governs the intellectual property terms under which contributions are made to, and specifications are published by, the Software Factory Foundation. Its purpose is to ensure that every Foundation specification can be implemented freely, perpetually, and without payment of royalties by anyone, anywhere.

All Final Standards published by the Foundation are released under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), which grants any party an irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free right to:

• Read, redistribute, and reference the specification;
• Implement the specification in software, hardware, or services;
• Create and distribute derivative documents.

Attribution requires reference to the Foundation as the original publisher and citation of the specification by name and version. Drafts and Candidate Recommendations are published under the same license terms with a clear marker that the document is non-final.

Enterprise and Startup members commit, as a condition of membership, to a Patent Non-Assertion Covenant with respect to claims that are necessarily infringed by a conformant implementation of a Final Standard. The Covenant grants every implementer an irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free license under Necessary Claims, regardless of whether the implementer is a Foundation member.

Research and Community members are not required to make this commitment but may opt in voluntarily; an opt-in by such a member is binding on the same terms as for Enterprise and Startup members.

For purposes of this Policy, "Necessary Claims" means those claims of a member's patents that are necessarily infringed by a conformant implementation of the normative portions of a Final Standard, excluding optional, informative, or enabling-technology portions.

The Covenant does not extend to claims that would be infringed only by combination with other technology, by the implementation of optional features explicitly identified as such in the specification, or by features added by an implementer beyond the normative scope.

Contributions to Foundation specifications, including text, diagrams, code, and reference implementations, shall be submitted under a Developer Certificate of Origin or equivalent attestation that the contributor has the right to make the contribution. Contributors grant the Foundation a perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free license to publish, sublicense, and incorporate the contribution into Foundation work product.

Contributors retain copyright and may use their contributions outside the Foundation under any terms they choose.

Reference implementations published by the Foundation are released under a permissive open-source license (default: Apache License 2.0) compatible with both proprietary and open-source downstream use.

The Foundation owns trademarks corresponding to its name, mission statement, and individual specifications. Use of Foundation trademarks for the purpose of indicating conformance to a Foundation specification is permitted subject to the published Trademark Use Guidelines. Use of Foundation trademarks for the purpose of suggesting endorsement, certification, or affiliation is reserved to the Foundation.

A member bound by the Patent Non-Assertion Covenant who withdraws from the Foundation remains bound by it with respect to Standards finalized during the member's term of membership. The Covenant survives membership.

Disputes arising under this Policy may be submitted to the Foundation's Executive Director for informal resolution and, if unresolved, to binding arbitration under rules selected by mutual consent.

This Policy is reviewed by Foundation counsel and ratified by the Board of Directors.