snapshot of https://github.com/zulip/zulip.git @ 48c69911c7dd4e03b20552eb3bd77ad8151c1357 (2026-09-15)

docs/contributing/licensing.md

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+# Licensing
+
+Zulip is distributed under the [Apache 2.0
+license](https://github.com/zulip/zulip/blob/main/LICENSE). This means that all
+contributions to Zulip — code, images, sounds, etc. — must be compatible with
+this license.
+
+## Contributing your own work
+
+If the work you are contributing is 100% your own, Zulip doesn't require you to
+sign a copyright assignment or a contributor license agreement for your
+contribution. As noted [in the GitHub Terms of
+Service](https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/github-terms/github-terms-of-service#6-contributions-under-repository-license):
+
+> “Whenever you add Content to a repository containing notice of a license, you
+> license that Content under the same terms, and you agree that you have the
+> right to license that Content under those terms... This is widely accepted as
+> the norm in the open-source community; ...”
+
+## Contributing someone else's work
+
+If any part of your contribution is from someone else (code snippets, images,
+sounds, or any other copyrightable work, modified or unmodified), you need to
+check whether it was distributed under an open-source license that is
+[compatible][wiki-compatibility] with the [Apache 2.0
+license](https://github.com/zulip/zulip/blob/main/LICENSE). If it was not, this
+work cannot be contributed to Zulip, with or without modification.
+
+[wiki-compatibility]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/License_compatibility#Compatibility_of_FOSS_licenses
+
+If you have verified that the work is OK to use, you will need to provide
+appropriate attribution in the [`docs/THIRDPARTY`
+file](https://github.com/zulip/zulip/blob/main/docs/THIRDPARTY) as part of your
+PR. Please refer to the [`debian/copyright` file
+documentation](https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/)
+for a detailed description (including examples) of how to correctly describe the
+copyright and licensing information in your PR.
+
+If you are not sure about the licensing or attribution for your work, please
+include the full details of your open questions in the description for your PR.