[Argorak]

> I can only assume that the legal downside to not having a CLA signed for every single-line commit is enormous. Are there previous court cases in the US where not having a CLA got someone destroyed?

I don't know of any court cases, but I do know of several projects that were not able to change their license because they didn't have a CLA and couldn't contact all previous contributors. Thats the right that section 1 of the nodejs CLA gives them.

Fun fact: nodejs reserves the right to use your contribution under "(b) binary, proprietary, or commercial licenses".