[mglukhovsky]

We require contributors to sign a CLA before accepting pull requests to RethinkDB (http://github.com/rethinkdb/rethinkdb) for several (excellent) reasons, explained here: http://www.rethinkdb.com/community/cla/

We've found that it's a low hurdle for contributors-- it's a common attribute of most open source projects and helps avoid headaches of ownership later on down the road.

Essentially, no project wants the question of who owns contributed code to come up. The SCO-Linux controversy would have been avoided if a CLA had been in place, and since then they've become standard practice.