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There was a thread earlier today about chatbots basically being designed to frustrate customers and get them to go away, and I can't help but suspect that this

There was a thread earlier today about chatbots basically being designed to frustrate customers and get them to go away, and I can't help but suspect that this system has been set up in a similar way. I suspect a lot of open-source folk would not appreciate this, but in my experience as a maintainer of a small-ish project, the overwhelming majority of contributions are well-intentioned but not very helpful (of course, the few contributions that are extremely helpful more than make the whole process worth it!). It creates a fairly awkward situation where the maintainer doesn't want to be rude and reject the contributor's work (which they have spent their own time making and are sharing for free), so they reluctantly take time away from solving real issues and validate the patch instead. I could see how erecting deliberate roadblocks could avoid a lot of this discomfort.

jlengrand 5y ago
I'd argue that most people involved in maintaining / setting up that CLA process simply don't have to experience the pain of the new comer. They have their account set up a long time ago and simply don't have to go through that experience.
edflsafoiewq 5y ago
I really doubt it. CLAs are from lawyers being in control, not something programmers would dream up. I do think something similar about issue templates though, their main function is to give programmers "cover", so they can say "you didn't fill out the template" instead of "the bug report you wrote is garbage".
taleinat 5y ago
(Python core dev here.) At least for the Python project, there are more than enough inherent "roadblocks" for new contributors to overcome. Work is being actively done to remove some of these, or at least make overcoming them easier.