Not arguing for contributing to Microsoft’s repos, but most open source projects under most well respected foundations do the same. There is a big argument for or against CLAs but it’s not like it’s just them.

Yes, lots of organizations want free labor. That has no bearing on whether its ethical.

There's a somewhat decent argument to be made for non-profit organizations, but there's none for for-profit orgs like Microsoft.

successfully reach out to all contributors to the Linux kernel and then tell me CLAs are bad for a corporation.

you open source people, man. you give all developers a horrible reputation. put up or shut up, lol

That copyright of the Linux kernel is being shared by all is contributors is essential in making it an actual public good.

I have no idea what you want to express with your second paragraph, though.

There is a Linux BDFL that everyone refers to for any disputes. He can't be there forever unfortunately. Who knows how Linux will be 10 or 20 years without him.

I've always thought CLAs were a strong indicator that an organization doesn't actually want one's free labor.

I am being compensated by the things I use getting better.

That is by definition not compensation.

I have to say I'm disappointed seeing you defend exploitative labor practices.

There is nothing exploitative when evaluating these two options:

* Patching the binary locally without its source code to do what I want it to do

* Submitting a patch upstream to an open source project

and arriving at the conclusion that the latter is preferable.

Yes there is, because the for-profit organisation making you sign a CLA for your contributions is effectively using your free labor to suppress wages of its employees.

Doing free work for an employer is always parasitic with regards to its employees.

You have a third option here which you didn't list, which is forking the project into one which is working in favor of the public; removing the CLA and giving each contributor shared ownership of the project. Your contribution should then be made to that project.

I can't fork the project into something that ships with the OS.

That's fine, people can still load your program onto it themselves.

so fork it and work on it yourself.

do I have to tell everyone what the MIT license allows?