Comment Re:Copyright owners can change the license (Score 3) 98
If a company requires you to assign copyright to them when you contribute to an open source project then that's always a risk you run.
It's a risk, but it is also one with a time limit. Copyright assignments can be revoked; assuming the contributor did not develop and get paid for their submission under a work for hire contract.
A contract requires some kind of consideration to begin with, and,
The US copyright Act also has a Termination clause that allows the author, or the author's heirs to terminate copyright assignments. Which means that If the company obtain contributions under copyright assignment -- It is likely that at some point in a future decade they will lose the rights that were previously assigned and Have to negotiate with the authors' heirs for a continued license to further distribute the code.