> I see this as very much in line with the original spirit of the GPL, regardless whether MogoDB's motivation might be primarily commercial or not. I disagree.

> I see this as very much in line with the original spirit of the GPL, regardless whether MogoDB's motivation might be primarily commercial or not. I disagree. GPL was never about relicensing other people's software. The SSPL basically requires this if you read Section 13. > CLAs are pretty common nowadays and they can be a problem for potential contributors but pointing at MongoDB, for just doing what many other large OpenSource projects do, isn't fair. Just because many projects do this doesn't mean it's a good thing to do -- the FSF CLA is the only CLA I would find acceptable because it's purpose is to ensure they can relicense to later GPL versions as well as have litigation rights in the US. Several other "CLAs" (like Apache's) are actually just beefed up versions of the DCO. But unconditional and asymmetric CLAs are the reason that OpenSolaris could become proprietary under Oracle, as well as many other horror stories in the history of free software. Many people use them, but that doesn't justify it.