I ran a non-profit called ossline for a while (www.ossline.org) which helped open source projects with contributor license agreements, so I am familiar with the

I ran a non-profit called ossline for a while (www.ossline.org) which helped open source projects with contributor license agreements, so I am familiar with the issues. I don't understand this "no way in hell I am signing a contract just to contribute to an open source project" sentiment. It is trivially easy to do (see Node.js's CLA which is an entirely electronic form,) and it gives the users all sorts of additional protections that traditional open source licenses can't otherwise provide, such as patent royalty protections. The downside of these CLA agreements is that it allows the controllers of the project to re-release code under a less stringent license, and in some cases a commercial license. I can see someone becoming upset that code they worked on in a GPL project was later released as BSD, but that doesn't seem to be an issue with the OP. All in all, the only reasonable take away here can be summarized in a sentence: "Diaspora may have a more limited uptake by corporations who are hesitant to open source proprietary additions to the software." Certainly nothing to write a rant over.