# PROJECT JAMES — Individual Contributor License Agreement (ICLA)

> **Version**: v1.0 (2026-05-19)
> **Project**: PROJECT JAMES (`hashevolution/james-rag-evol`)
> **Maintainer**: Hashevolution

Thank you for your interest in contributing to PROJECT JAMES (the "Project"),
maintained by **Hashevolution** (the "Project Lead"). This Contributor License
Agreement ("Agreement") clarifies the intellectual property license granted
with Contributions from any individual ("You" or "Contributor").

This Agreement is based on the **Apache Software Foundation Individual
Contributor License Agreement v2.2**, adapted for PROJECT JAMES's licensing
model. By signing this Agreement, you accept and agree to the following
terms for Your present and future Contributions submitted to the Project.

## 1. Definitions

**"You"** (or **"Your"**) means the individual copyright owner who Submits a
Contribution to the Project. For purposes of this Agreement, "You" includes
the entity by which You are employed if Your employer holds rights to
intellectual property You create (see §4 below).

**"Contribution"** means any original work of authorship, including any
modifications or additions to an existing work, that is intentionally
submitted by You to the Project for inclusion in, or documentation of, any
of the products owned or managed by the Project. "Submitted" means any form
of electronic, verbal, or written communication sent to the Project or its
representatives, including but not limited to communication on electronic
mailing lists, source code control systems, and issue tracking systems that
are managed by, or on behalf of, the Project for the purpose of discussing
and improving the Project, but excluding communication that is conspicuously
marked or otherwise designated in writing by You as "Not a Contribution."

## 2. Grant of Copyright License

Subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement, You hereby grant to
**Hashevolution** and to recipients of software distributed by the Project a
perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable
copyright license to reproduce, prepare derivative works of, publicly
display, publicly perform, sublicense, and distribute Your Contributions and
such derivative works.

## 3. Grant of Patent License

Subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement, You hereby grant to
**Hashevolution** and to recipients of software distributed by the Project a
perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable
(except as stated in this section) patent license to make, have made, use,
offer to sell, sell, import, and otherwise transfer the Project, where such
license applies only to those patent claims licensable by You that are
necessarily infringed by Your Contribution(s) alone or by combination of
Your Contribution(s) with the Project to which such Contribution(s) was
submitted.

If any entity institutes patent litigation against You or any other entity
(including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that Your
Contribution, or the Project to which You have contributed, constitutes
direct or contributory patent infringement, then any patent licenses granted
to that entity under this Agreement for that Contribution or the Project
shall terminate as of the date such litigation is filed.

## 4. Representation of Original Authorship

You represent that each of Your Contributions is Your original creation
(see §5 below for submissions on behalf of others) and that You are legally
entitled to grant the above license. You represent that Your Contribution
submissions include complete details of any third-party license or other
restriction (including, but not limited to, related patents and trademarks)
of which You are personally aware and which are associated with any part of
Your Contributions.

If Your employer(s) has rights to intellectual property that You create that
includes Your Contributions, You represent that You have received permission
to make Contributions on behalf of that employer, that Your employer has
waived such rights for Your Contributions to the Project, or that Your
employer has executed a separate Corporate CLA with Hashevolution.

## 4-bis. Relicensing Grant *(decisive clause)*

> You hereby grant to **Hashevolution** the right, but not the obligation,
> to relicense Your Contributions, in whole or in part, under any other
> license terms of its choosing, including but not limited to other
> open-source licenses (e.g., AGPL-3.0, Apache-2.0, BUSL-1.1) or proprietary
> commercial licenses. This grant is irrevocable for Contributions already
> accepted. You acknowledge that this grant enables Hashevolution to evolve
> the Project's license model in response to market and ecosystem
> conditions without obtaining further consent from individual contributors.

**Why this clause exists**: open-source projects that later need to evolve
their license model (e.g., MongoDB from AGPL → SSPL, Elastic from Apache →
SSPL → AGPL, Grafana from Apache → AGPL) were able to do so because every
contributor signed an equivalent clause from the start. Without this clause,
any future license change would require **renegotiating individual consent
from every contributor** — practically impossible at scale.

Today PROJECT JAMES is **MIT-licensed**, and Hashevolution has no immediate
intent to change that — the conditions and procedure for any future
transition are tracked transparently in
[`docs/LICENSE_PLAN.md`](../LICENSE_PLAN.md). This clause is harmless under
MIT continuation: if Hashevolution never exercises it, contributors observe
no effect. The clause exists solely to keep the option open.

## 5. Submissions Not Your Original Work

Should You wish to submit work that is not Your original creation, You may
submit it to the Project separately from any Contribution, identifying the
complete details of its source and of any license or other restriction
(including, but not limited to, related patents, trademarks, and license
agreements) of which You are personally aware, and conspicuously marking
the work as "Submitted on behalf of a third-party: [named here]".

## 6. No Warranty

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, You provide Your
Contributions on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY
KIND, either express or implied, including, without limitation, any
warranties or conditions of TITLE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, MERCHANTABILITY, or
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

## 7. Notice of Inaccurate Representation

You agree to notify the Project of any facts or circumstances of which You
become aware that would make these representations inaccurate in any
respect.

## 8. Corporate Contributions

Contributions submitted on behalf of an employer that retains intellectual
property rights to Your work require a separate Corporate CLA (CCLA). The
CCLA will be introduced at the v0.4 First Domain Pilot milestone and will
contain the same §4-bis Relicensing Grant. Until then, employer-rights
Contributions should be cleared through §4 (employer permission/waiver).

## Signing

This CLA is administered via **CLA Assistant**
(<https://cla-assistant.io/>). When you open your first pull request to
`hashevolution/james-rag-evol`, the bot will request a single-click
signature against this document. One signature covers all your future
contributions to the Project unless the Project's license model materially
changes (see §4-bis).

## Diff log

| Date | Author | Change |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-05-19 | Hashevolution | Initial v1.0 publication. Apache ICLA v2.2 baseline + §4-bis Relicensing Grant. |
