[palata]

If you only take, obviously there is no reason to complain. Now the problem is rather when contributors (those who "give", not those who "take") have to sign a CLA. Then the company who gets their copyright takes their work for free, to later use it in a non open-source project (assuming they changed the license, like Redis did).

I think it is valid to find this immoral. The solution is pretty simple though: do not contribute to open source projects that require you to sign a CLA.

[lukaszwojtow]

Using the code later in a non open-source project can happen also with MIT/Apache licensed code. Even without CLA. Does it mean that company that does it is immoral?

[palata]

If you use MIT/Apache code that doesn't enforce a CLA, the contributor keeps the copyright on their contributions. So no, that's not immoral, that's part of the license the contributor chose for their contribution (the contributor could make a PR and license their contribution with e.g. GPL: that would be their right).

What is considered immoral is to take the copyright from the contributors without giving any compensation.

[endisneigh]

No? They create a fork that maintains the existing terms. No cla required.

[palata]

That is not the problem with the CLA (of course you can fork). The problem with the CLA is that the company then uses the contributed code just like if it was their own, even though they did not pay for it.

Developers should be aware of that and, personally, I think contributors should never accept to sign a CLA. If the project requires a CLA, don't contribute.