What is LFX EasyCLA?

LFX EasyCLA helps maintainers of open source projects streamline their workflows and reduce the hassle of managing Contributor License Agreements (CLAs) and authorizing contributors. By automating many of the manual processes, this open source solution hosted by the Linux Foundation reduces delays for developers to get authorized under a CLA.

What is a CLA?

A Contributor License Agreement (CLA) defines the terms under which intellectual property is contributed to a company or project. Typically, the intellectual property is software under an open source license. EasyCLA helps to ensure that contributions are not pulled into a project unless a CLA covering the contributor has been signed. CLAs typically fall into one of two categories:

• Corporate Contributor License Agreement

  If the company (employer) owns the contribution, a CCLA signatory signs a Corporate CLA. The Corporate CLA legally binds the corporation, so the agreement must be signed by a person with authority to enter into legal contracts on behalf of the corporation. A project may require that every employee (developer) should sign their own individual CLA (which separately covers contributions owned by the individual contributor) besides being covered by corporate CLA.

• Individual Contributor License Agreement

  If as an individual you own the contribution, you sign the Individual CLA. A signed Individual CLA may be required before an individual's contribution can be merged into the project repository.

How Does it Work?

The following high-level diagram shows the different flows and roles that EasyCLA supports.

What Role are You?

How you interact with EasyCLA depends on your role. EasyCLA supports the following roles in its workflow:

• ​Project Manager​

• ​Contributor​

• ​Corporate CLA Manager​

• ​Corporate CLA Signatory​

Project Manager

You are a project manager if you are the project maintainer who has responsibilities such as managing a project’s GitHub organization or Gerrit instance, members, repositories, and CLAs. You have access to specific projects within the EasyCLA project console, also referred as Project Control Center.

With EasyCLA, you do the following CLA set-up tasks:

1. ​Install the EasyCLA Application.

2. ​Add a CLA Group.

3. ​Add Contributor License Agreements.

4. ​Add GitHub repositories or Gerrit instances to enforce CLA monitoring.

At any time, you can change the settings to manage your project CLA monitoring, and do other management tasks:

• ​View Current and Previous CLA PDFs​

• ​Manage CLA Group Details​

Contributor

You are a contributor (developer) if you contribute code to GitHub or Gerrit projects. With EasyCLA, you will follow different workflows depending on whether the project is hosted on GitHub or Gerrit, and whether you contribute on behalf of a company or yourself as an individual:

• Individual Contributor (GitHub): Sign a CLA as an Individual Contributor and contribute to GitHub project.

• Individual Contributor (Gerrit): Contribute to Gerrit project​

• Corporate Contributor (GitHub): Contribute to GitHub project​

• Corporate Contributor (Gerrit): Contribute to Gerrit Project​

Corporate CLA Manager

You are a Corporate CLA manager (CCLA manager) if you are the person authorized to manage the list of approved contributors under your company’s Corporate CLA. There can be one or more CLA managers for a company. With this responsibility, you use EasyCLA to:

• ​Add companies to a project​

• ​Approve Contributors​

• ​Add or Delete CLA Managers​

Corporate CLA Signatory

You are a Corporate CLA signatory (CCLA signatory) if you are authorized to sign contracts, such as the project’s CLA, on behalf of the company. With EasyCLA, you can:

• ​Review and sign a Corporate CLA by request.