# How to apply a license

Originally Nextcloud was licensed under the GNU AGPLv3 only. From
June, 16 2016 on we switched to "GNU AGPLv3 or any later version" for
better long-term maintainability and to make it more secure from a
legal point of view.

Additionally Nextcloud doesn't require a CLA (Contributor License
Agreement). The copyright belongs to all the individual
contributors.

If you modify an existing file, please keep the existing license header as
it is and just add your copyright notice:

````
@copyright Copyright (c) <year>, <your name> (<your email address>)
````

If you create a new file please use this license header:

````
/**
 * @copyright Copyright (c) <year>, <your name> (<your email address>)
 *
 * @license GNU AGPL version 3 or any later version
 *
 * This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
 * it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as
 * published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the
 * License, or (at your option) any later version.
 *
 * This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
 * but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
 * MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
 * GNU Affero General Public License for more details.
 *
 * You should have received a copy of the GNU Affero General Public License
 * along with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
 *
 */
````

Additionally we require a Developer Certificate of Origin (DCO), look
at [CONTRIBUTING.md][contributing] to learn more how to sign your commits.

[contributing]: ../.github/CONTRIBUTING.md#sign-your-work
