I think the point was made, but worth emphasising from a different direction.

Different organisations have different goals when it comes to releasing code as Open Source.

Setting aside universities for the moment, companies (and especially startups) have (hopefully) a strategy which takes their product to commercialism and profitability.

Some projects go OSS purely for the marketing, attracting talent, unpaid labour and so on. But ultimately that means a pivot, and a CLA gives them more pivoting choices. They might cut out some contributers, but at the same time they serve the long game.

If you are wanting to contribute to a project, you, in turn, need to be clear what your goals are, and make sure they are aligned with the -long term- goals of the project owner.