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Update CONTRIBUTING.md to broaden the intent of the contributor agree…
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…ment

- Merged DCO Signing and Contributor License Agreement sections for clarity.
- Clarified the authority required for code submissions and the potential rights of employers.
- Simplified the DCO signing instructions and emphasized the need for legal compliance.
- Streamlined language to reduce redundancy and maintain legal soundness.
- Added explicit confirmation of rights granted by contributors, including employer permissions.
- Emphasized GNU Radio’s principles of remaining free/libre and compliant with evolving laws.
- Highlighted the support for public-private partnerships and commercial contributions without disclosing proprietary stacks.
- Maintained the spirit of open-source contributions and community collaboration.
- Ensured the guidelines are clear, concise, and foster an inclusive environment.

See the updated CONTRIBUTING.md for details.

Co-authored-by: Josh Morman <[email protected]>

Signed-off-by: Josh Morman <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: Ralph J. Steinhagen <[email protected]>
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Expand Up @@ -15,14 +15,6 @@ examples or if you cannot find anything that fits your use-case use GitHub's dis
## Contributing code and content
We welcome all forms of contributions from the community. Please read the following guidelines to maximise the chances of your PR being merged.

### DCO Signing

Any code contributions going into GNU Radio will become part of a LGPL-licensed, open source repository. It is therefore imperative that code submissions belong to the authors, and that submitters have the authority to merge that code into the public GNU Radio codebase.

For that purpose, we use the [Developer's Certificate of Origin](DCO.txt). It is the same document used by other projects. Signing the DCO states that there are no legal reasons to not merge your code.

To sign the DCO, suffix your git commits with a "Signed-off-by" line. When using the command line, you can use `git commit -s` to automatically add this line. If there were multiple authors of the code, or other types of stakeholders, make sure that all are listed, each with a separate Signed-off-by line.

### Communication
- Before starting work on a feature, check if there isn't already an examples in the 'samples' sub-module.
If not, then please open an issue on GitHub describing the proposed feature. We want to make sure any feature work goes smoothly.
Expand All @@ -45,37 +37,48 @@ Please be sure to follow the usual process for submitting PRs:

We reserve the right to close PRs that are not making progress. Closed PRs can be reopened again later and work can resume.

### Contributor License Agreement
By contributing your code to GNU Radio you grant us a non-exclusive,
irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, sublicenseable, transferable
license under all of Your relevant intellectual property rights
(including copyright, patent, and any other rights), to use, copy,
prepare derivative works of, distribute and publicly perform and
display the Contributions on any licensing terms, including without limitation:
(a) open source licenses like the Apache license; and (b) binary,
proprietary, or commercial licenses. Except for the licenses granted herein,
You reserve all right, title, and interest in and to the Contribution.

You confirm that you are able to grant us these rights. You represent
that You are legally entitled to grant the above license. If Your employer
has rights to intellectual property that You create, You represent that
You have received permission to make the Contributions on behalf of that
employer, or that Your employer has waived such rights for the Contributions.

You represent that the Contributions are Your original works of
authorship, and to Your knowledge, no other person claims, or
has the right to claim, any right in any invention or patent
related to the Contributions. You also represent that You are
not legally obligated, whether by entering into an agreement
or otherwise, in any way that conflicts with the terms of this license.

We acknowledge that, except as explicitly described in this
Agreement, any Contribution which you provide is 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.
### DCO Signing & Contributor License Agreement

Code submitters must have the authority to merge that code into the public GNU Radio codebase.
In some cases, the rights to exploit the code may belong to the contributor's employer, depending on jurisdiction
and employment agreements.

For that purpose, we use the [Developer's Certificate of Origin](DCO.txt). It is the same document used by other
projects.
Signing the DCO states that there are no legal reasons to not merge your code.

To sign the DCO, suffix your git commits with a "Signed-off-by" line. When using the command line,
you can use `git commit -s` to automatically add this line. If there were multiple authors of the code, or other types
of stakeholders, make sure that all are listed, each with a separate Signed-off-by line.

#### Notably, by contributing to GNU Radio:

1. you grant this project a non-exclusive, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, sublicensable, transferable license
under all of your relevant intellectual property rights (including copyright, patent, and any other rights), to use,
copy, prepare derivative works of, distribute, and publicly perform and display the contributions.
2. You confirm that you are able to grant us these rights. You represent that you are legally entitled to grant the
above license. If Your employer has rights to intellectual property that You create, You represent that You have
received permission to make the Contributions on behalf of that employer, or that Your employer has waived such
rights for the Contributions.
3. You represent that the Contributions are Your original works of authorship, and to Your knowledge, no other person
claims, or has the right to claim, any right in any invention or patent related to the Contributions.
You also represent that You are not legally obligated, whether by entering into an agreement or otherwise, in any way
that conflicts with the terms of this license.
4. We acknowledge that, except as explicitly described in this Agreement, any Contribution which you provide is 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.

This above is to ensure that the GNU Radio Project:

* Remains free/libre in the spirit of the open source licenses and [Public-Money-Public-Code](https://publiccode.eu/en/) principles
(freedom, right-to-repair, tax savings, collaboration, serving the public, fostering innovation).
* Stays or can be made compliant under international and national laws if these change (notably U.S. and EU stances on
cybersecurity, product liability, GDPR, and use of AI).
* Encourages public-private/industry partnerships to foster innovation and collaboration, ensuring that all can benefit
from and contribute to the project.

## Code of Conduct
To ensure an inclusive community, contributors and users in the GNU Radio
community should follow the [code of conduct](./CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md).

To ensure an inclusive community, contributors and users in the GNU Radio community should follow
the [code of conduct](./CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md).

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