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Contributor License Agreements (CLA) is legal documentation that serves to protect any contributors to a project in regard to copyright issues and distribution. Essentially the CLA states that the contributor writer/computer programmer/etc. has agreed to allow their input to be used in the ongoing development of the project, while protecting them against future copyright infringement, and permitting them to take legal action should there be a case of infringement or should they not be receiving credit for their contributions. Additionally, it protects the other parties, as well, as the CLA does not allow for the contributor to later refuse use of their material. https://www.upcounsel.com/contributor-license-agreement

There are different tools to help with CLA¹⁾

• CLA Assistant – Contributed by SAP, the CLA Assistant streamlines workflows by handling the legal side of contributions for users. The Assistant asks code contributors to sign CLAs as they make their code contributions and authenticates each contributor with his or her GitHub account. It also updates the status of a pull request when the contributor agrees to the CLA and automatically asks users to re-sign the CLA for each new pull request if changes are made to the CLA.https://github.com/cla-assistant/cla-assistant

• CLA Portal – From VMware, CLA Portal adds a workflow to enable contributors to digitally sign a CLA for pull requests to your GitHub repositories. When a developer opens a pull request, they are prompted to sign the agreement if needed. Also included is an administrator interface for CLA authoring, CLA-to-project mapping, and agreement reviews.https://github.com/vmware/claportal

• DCOB – A Developer Certificate of Origin Bot which helps to enforce developer certificate of origin sign-offs for each code change in a pull request. The DCOB sets the status for each accepted code change, as required by the Developer Certificate of Origin.https://github.com/chef/dcob