Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems that whenever an open source project is run by a VC-backed company, it sooner or later ends up like this. Increasingly it seems that "open source" is just the teaser to get people interested and then when investors want revenue growth, the rug gets pulled. IMO, it's not really open source if its run by a company that will eventually use its position to squeeze its users for cash.
Like other folks have said, anytime you see a CLA, you see the true intentions of the project. A project that will always be FOSS won't have a need for a CLA.
There's this balance between being a project forever run out of someone's garage and actually growing into a larger and more used system. I'd say the line is dilineated by many factors: who is the project's primary user? Enterprise? Devs? How much money is changing hands? What's the business model? Is there investment involved? How restrictive is the primary license? How restrictive is the CLA?
I think any open-source project that has aspirations to actually make money for the creators is shooting themselves in the foot without a CLA. And it's fine to judge them for this, but we live in a system where people have to extract value out of this shit even if it's against their ethos.
If people truly and ultimately believe in open-source, then the most logical conclusion is that capitalism does not allow for open source and that must be changed. Fighting things at the license level can only delay the inevitable. But people want to have their cake and eat it too: "I want the system to stay the same AND I want open-source creators to keep pumping out stuff for free forever."