In turn, I'm amazed that people put effort into databases that are owned by companies. Wouldn't it be much more fulfilling to do the same work for an open database, such as open street maps?
There are tons of open source developers who contribute to code bases that require copyright assignment. They probably do it for the same reasons:
* It's personally useful
* It's useful to a lot of people
* It's (comparatively) easy to do
* It's rewarding in some other way
In some cases, the company is asking for a license to use+distribute the code (which IMHO should be implied by open a PR in the first place).
For example, you can read Square’s CLA here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeRVQ35-gq2vdSxD1kd...