Not just investors. I had long conversations with legal about that to better understand why it is necessary. Don't get me wrong, I don't like it either but here

Not just investors. I had long conversations with legal about that to better understand why it is necessary. Don't get me wrong, I don't like it either but here is the deal: - I want this project to be a success (and open source) - To make it a success I need to live - To live I need to pay for food Commercialization in OSS is pretty straight forward as there aren't many options: - Support, managed hosting, paid plugins/features, sponsors. With the exception of Sponsors, all of these require a number of changes to code and infrastructure that should not be public and this would not be possible without a CLA. Ergo: CLA -> OSS Developer gets to live. Yes, it does open the door to license changes and that is a whole other story. But what it boils down to is that funding an OSS project without a CLA is basically impossible.