Hi Tim,
First, thank you for being so patient. As per LNG members, you have silicon vendors, distro vendors, NEPs. I am sure you saw that not all NEPs are contributing. Some may, some are not contributing code at all even if they active in the community.
More importantly, contributing does not mean building and selling products that include DPDK. DPDK can be/become a playground to learn about userland network IO while products are built on derived proprietary technology.
Let's rephrase: I am not mandating a CLA, I just stress that intellectual property and licensing aspects are better off handled at the bengining. As per Mike Dolan, Apache 2 is also a good approach. I hope every contributor have gone (or are going to go) through due dilligence about selling products based on DPDK with its counsel.
When you say "Depending on their company's legal policy, that may slow down or block contributions.": hopefully you don't think there is a need for legal intervention for each contribution. right? there is just one CLA to be established at the first contribution.
And I hope you don't mean that people don't go to legal because they know they will block contributions so they keep low profile and contribute: that would be a very bad corporate responsability behavior!
Cordially,