&#62; What would stop you to even consider signing the agreement ? (true question)<p>Anything ending on a '?' should be a true question :)<p>I think what would stop me is the fact that the contribution alone is not enough, that on top of that I would be required to enter in to some legally binding agreement.<p>The benefits from what I can see are exclusively one-sided.<p>I'm fine with Rich Hickey wanting to keep a strong hand on what is happening, I'm not so fine with him taking (shared) ownership of all contributions.<p>This could lead to all kinds of trouble, for instance in the event of his untimely expiration. His estate would suddenly be the party that I find myself holding 'joint copyright' with on something that I wrote.<p>That could cause a lot of headaches.<p>So, instead if that situation would come up I'd release it out of the clojure contributions package as a stand-alone thing.<p>Anything that needs <a href="http://www.sun.com/software/opensource/contributor_agreement.jsp" rel="nofollow">http://www.sun.com/software/opensource/contributor_agreement...</a> this much legalese is probably best not signed until you've had a lawyer look it over, and that's going to set you back a pretty penny.<p>Contracts are great for people that do not trust each other, they add a stiff price on top of the original arrangement which makes it expensive to break. A low-life open source contributor has no place signing contracts that carry possible consequences over and above the contribution.<p>That should be the sum total of it, requiring people to sign stuff imho is not the way to go about this.