I find it curious that Microsoft doesnt get more shit for demanding a CLA, especially given that embrace, extend, extinguish is in their DNA.

Even GNU projects ask people to sign a CLA.

Assigning copyright to something like the FSF or the Free Qt Foundation is not at all like assigning copyright to Hashicorp or Microsoft or Oracle.

GNU projects assign the FSF as the copyright holder. The FSF is inherently trustworthy. (Since the FSF controls the GPL.)

One day someone untrustworthy will be in charge of the FSF, and ‘or later’ is suddenly going to be #awkward. Linus made the right call there, for sure.

The FSF is not an autocratic kingdom with a despotic ruler on top. It is a 501(c)(3) foundation, with bylaws and regulations to cover this eventuality.

This was all hashed out years ago in numerous flame wars on Usenet, as I’m sure you know.

> AGPL+CLA is "we're setting up for a bait and switch with not open source versions".

Which is fine imo as long as the moment they pull the bait/switch they stop calling it open source (and others can fork at that point)

I think I'd be fine _using_ an AGPL+CLA product, but not contributing.

Thats exactly the point.

I'm not sure if we're agreeing or not to be honest. I'm not sure if you're implying it's a bad thing that people won't contribute to AGPL+CLA (and thereby justifies these more restrictive licenses), or agreeing that people shouldn't contribute to AGPL+CLA (and thereby volunteer their time to the benefit of one specific vendor).

Whether or not someone contributes to something and under what terms is a personal choice. I dont think there is anything wrong with not contributing for any reason at all. Or if you dont like the cla, forking it and not using a cla in your fork.

I view that as a very different question from whether its ethical to advertize something agpl+cla as being open source.