Fiduciary Programme

The FSFE has in the past acted as the legal guardian of Free Software projects, under our Fiduciary Programme. The Fiduciary Programme allows projects to use the Fiduciary License Agreement (FLA) to assign copyrights to FSFE, allowing the consolidation and effective management of their copyright status. It allows developers to focus on making great applications rather than dealing with legal administration. Adopters of the FLA include KDE e.V. (KDE), which has been using the FLA as its preferred form for assigning copyright to KDE since 2008. The FSFE has in the past assisted KDE with their adoption of the FLA in several ways.

As part of the Fiduciary Programme, the FSFE made sure that projects are in a strong legal position without being prescriptive. The FSFE dictated neither project policy nor project management.

Unfortunately, FSFE is no longer accepting new projects under the Fiduciary Programme at the moment. Nevertheless, you can still use customisable versions of the Fiduciary License Agreement (FLA) in order to consolidate your copyright under your own administrative umbrella. We have a page containing customisable versions of the FLA here.

For more information on how to set up and manage the Fiduciary Licence Agreements please contact us.