There's a HUGE difference between copyright assignment (required by FSF!) and a license agreement (Google, Apache, Mozilla, many others). The former means you are giving away ownership to your IP, which is what you describe. The latter only means that the project can relicense or similar (which is very important if there's a bug in a license, for example). You retain copyright to any contributions made under a CLA.

It's a big difference. I don't see anything wrong with CLAs, and there are (according to some more versed in IP than I) some really good reasons to never accept patches without CLAs, especially when you're a potential high-profile lawsuit target.

If we're actually being precise, you grant them an irrevocable license to your code, which is not at all the same thing:

http://source.android.com/source/cla-individual.html

eg "Except for the license granted herein to the Project Leads and recipients of software distributed by the Project Leads, You reserve all right, title, and interest in and to Your Contributions."

> I'm all for freely contributing to projects, but I will never assign my copyright to a corporation. A not-for-profit at least, but corporation, come on.

The Mozilla committer's agreement, for instance, isn't that different in practice. You agree to specific licenses for your contribution (various shades of copyleft, MPL, GPL and LGPL) -- which amounts to anyone using that code being granted an irrevocable license -- but you retain copyright.

http://www.mozilla.org/hacking/committer/committers-agreemen...