Any contribution to the project are seen as copyright assigned to Hampton Catlin, a human on the planet earth. Your contribution warrants that you have the right to assign copyright on your work. The intention here is to ensure that the project remains totally free (liberal, like).
That's a curious setup. The license is MIT so you're not getting the "if you distribute it you have to use the same license" that you get with GPL. So as long as the contributions use the same MIT license why does the author need copyright assignment? The MIT license is simple and standard enough that relicensing doesn't seem like a likely need.
Good question. I've gotten conflicting legal advice. Some say I need full signed contributor agreements for everything, no matter the license, and some say that's not needed at all. I opted for something in-between. Just a notice that could cover our ass in the future. Several big companies are working on submitting code, and so licensing there can get tricky... hence, just go overkill and never worry about it. ;)
That's a curious setup. The license is MIT so you're not getting the "if you distribute it you have to use the same license" that you get with GPL. So as long as the contributions use the same MIT license why does the author need copyright assignment? The MIT license is simple and standard enough that relicensing doesn't seem like a likely need.