I happen to agree with the commentator on my doc.java.sun.com post. There ought to be a better way. But contribution agreements are remarkable common. Take a look at the one that the Apache Project uses. It's even longer than ours. They are an inevitable consequence of the way that the laws work. They should be changed, but it'll take a long time to bring the laws into the modern era. In the meantime, the laws are what they are. We've worked pretty hard to come up with the simplest scheme that fulfils the legal requirements.