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governance-integrated licensing

In a governance‑integrated approach, decisions about who can change the license, add CLA requirements, or introduce commercial terms are explicitly tied to project governance structures (e.g., foundation board, technical steering committee, maintainer group). The license is treated as part of the project’s constitutional rules, so governance processes control any evolution of licensing and IP policy over time.

  1. Governance model: Clear roles (maintainers, TSC, foundation), voting rules, and decision rights over strategic choices like relicensing or adding a CLA.​
  2. Licensing and compliance: Defined open source license(s), rules for adding proprietary or source‑available modules, and processes for scanning, attribution, and policy enforcement.​
  3. Policy alignment: Governance policies on contributions, security, and releases are aligned with license obligations (e.g., copyleft triggers, patent clauses, attribution).​

Integrating governance and licensing reduces the risk that a single company can unilaterally shift the license in ways that surprise the community or customers, because such moves must go through defined governance processes. It also gives enterprises clearer guarantees: they can see who controls licensing decisions, how those decisions are made, and how changes will be communicated and adopted.​ Some use cases you see in practice:

  1. Foundation‑backed projects (e.g., Apache‑style meritocratic governance) that pin an OSI license and require board‑level or multi‑stakeholder approval to change it.​
  2. Corporate‑led projects that publish explicit open source governance frameworks, where licensing, CLAs, and security policies are managed as part of an overall OSS governance program.​


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