this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2026
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Programming
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I never said that you can remove a license retroactively. A CLA is an assignment of copyright from the contributor to the company. The only reason for a company to add a CLA to a project is to put a rug under the project which they will pull as soon as they gained a critical mass of users. It fundamentally undermines the social contract of open source development. These companies want to enjoy all the benefit of open source, like the market appeal and the free labour, but none of the drawbacks. A CLA is just one thing, a promise that the project will go non-free in the future.