Contribution Terms

• 1.1 These Contribution Terms apply to every contribution to the Nexus Standards: comments, issues, errata, proposals, crosswalk entries, text, translations, test vectors, schemas, data and code, whether made through the public repository, a comment channel, a meeting or by email.
• 1.2 By making a contribution, the contributor accepts these Terms. Participation is free of charge and open to anyone; implementers of the standards need no agreement.

• 3.1 Each contribution is signed off with a line in the form Signed-off-by: Name <email>, in the commit message or alongside the contribution. By the sign-off, the contributor makes the statements of the Developer Certificate of Origin, version 1.1, reproduced below as published at developercertificate.org.
• 3.2 The name in the sign-off identifies the contributor. Anonymous contributions are not accepted, and a contribution prepared with the help of software is disclosed as such and signed off by the person responsible for it.
• 3.3 In the Developer Certificate of Origin, the open source licence indicated in the file means the licence set out in Section 4 for that kind of material.

Developer Certificate of Origin Version 1.1 Copyright (C) 2004, 2006 The Linux Foundation and its contributors. Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed. Developer's Certificate of Origin 1.1 By making a contribution to this project, I certify that: (a) The contribution was created in whole or in part by me and I have the right to submit it under the open source license indicated in the file; or (b) The contribution is based upon previous work that, to the best of my knowledge, is covered under an appropriate open source license and I have the right under that license to submit that work with modifications, whether created in whole or in part by me, under the same open source license (unless I am permitted to submit under a different license), as indicated in the file; or (c) The contribution was provided directly to me by some other person who certified (a), (b) or (c) and I have not modified it. (d) I understand and agree that this project and the contribution are public and that a record of the contribution (including all personal information I submit with it, including my sign-off) is maintained indefinitely and may be redistributed consistent with this project or the open source license(s) involved.

• 4.1 Contributors keep the copyright in their contributions; no assignment is required.
• 4.2 Contributed text, registry entries, schemas and data are licensed under CC BY 4.0, and contributed code, tools and tests under the Apache License 2.0, to GCRI Canada and to every recipient of the Specification.
• 4.3 To the extent permitted by law, the contributor consents to the editing, translation, adaptation and combination of the contribution in the course of the standards process, and to attribution in the form the programme uses, and agrees not to assert moral rights in a way that would prevent those uses.

• 5.1 The contributor has the right to make the contribution and, where it is made in the course of employment or on behalf of an organisation, has that organisation's authorisation.
• 5.2 The contribution contains no text, figure or table of an external standard unless its licence permits inclusion and the licence is stated, no confidential information, no personal information of another person without a lawful basis, and no material whose publication is restricted by export-control or sanctions law.
• 5.3 The contributor declares any employment, contract, funding or equity relationship with a technology provider, a licensee or a party affected by the proposal, and steps aside from decisions where a conflict exists.
• 5.4 The contributor discloses any patent or patent application known to the contributor, held by the contributor or by others, that may contain Essential Claims for the Specification concerned. No patent search is required.

• 6.1 Each contributor grants to every implementer a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, no-charge licence under the contributor's Essential Claims to make, have made, use, sell, offer for sale, import and otherwise distribute Implementations of the Specification into which the contribution is incorporated.
• 6.2 The licence covers only the portions of an Implementation that the Specification requires, and does not extend to other features of a product or to other specifications.
• 6.3 During the exclusion window of a last call, a contributor may exclude named patents or patent applications by written notice to the Secretariat. The Global Standards Council then decides whether to proceed with the Specification, to narrow it or to stop.
• 6.4 The licence granted by a contributor ends as to any person that brings a proceeding alleging that an Implementation of the same Specification infringes an Essential Claim of that person, except a proceeding brought in response to a claim first made against it.
• 6.5 The commitment binds any person to whom the contributor transfers the Essential Claims, continues after the contributor stops participating for every Specification published before that date, and is irrevocable except as stated in this Section. Infrastructure and technology-support providers give the same commitment for their own contributions.

• 7.1 The development process is open. Contributions, sign-offs, comments, dispositions and decisions are published and kept as a public record for the life of the standard and in its archive, as stated in clause (d) of the Developer Certificate of Origin. Personal information in that record is handled as described in the Privacy Policy.

• 8.1 Working groups, committees and councils bring together organisations that may compete. Their work is limited to the technical and governance matters of the standards, and every participant keeps full independence in its own commercial decisions.
• 8.2 Participants shall not discuss, exchange information about or agree on current or future prices, fees, wages, costs, bids, terms with customers or suppliers, allocation of customers, markets or territories, output or capacity, or any boycott or exclusion of a competitor, supplier or customer.
• 8.3 Competitively sensitive information of a single organisation is not shared in programme spaces. Where data from several organisations is needed for systemic-risk analysis, it is aggregated, historical or processed independently so that no single organisation's position can be identified.
• 8.4 Agendas are circulated in advance, minutes are kept, and the chair opens each meeting with the reminder below. The chair stops any discussion that strays into a prohibited topic and records that it was stopped; any participant may raise the concern.
• 8.5 Participation, sponsorship or funding confers no preference in procurement, no weight in a technical decision and no influence over the evidence or conclusions of the programme. Procurement decisions remain with the competent buyers under the rules that apply to them.
• 8.6 Participants are encouraged to consult their own legal advisers on any doubt about a topic before raising it.

Reminder read at the start of each meeting: this meeting is held under the competition-law safeguards of the Nexus Standards. Participants will not discuss prices, wages, bids, customers, markets, output or the exclusion of any competitor, and each organisation remains free to make its own commercial decisions. The agenda has been circulated and minutes will be kept.

• 9.1 The Secretariat, the editors and the committees are not obliged to include any contribution. Each comment receives a public disposition with reasons.
• 9.2 Contributions are made without payment. A contribution creates no partnership, employment, agency or endorsement.

• 10.1 A contributor may stop contributing at any time. Licences and the patent commitment given for contributions already made continue in accordance with their terms.
• 10.2 These Terms are governed by the laws of the Province of Ontario and the federal laws of Canada applicable therein, without prejudice to any mandatory law that applies to the contributor. Nothing in these Terms waives the privileges and immunities of a state or an international organisation, or submits it to the jurisdiction of any court.
• 10.3 These Terms may be amended for future contributions; the amended Terms are published on this page with a new effective date. An amendment does not change the terms that applied to a contribution when it was made.