diff --git a/CONTRIBUTING.md b/CONTRIBUTING.md
index 592b0d5..3165304 100644
--- a/CONTRIBUTING.md
+++ b/CONTRIBUTING.md
@@ -2,6 +2,8 @@
 
 We love Pull Requests! Your contributions help make ChooseALicense.com great.
 
+Contributions to this project are [released](https://help.github.com/articles/github-terms-of-service/#6-contributions-under-repository-license) to the public under the [project's open source license](LICENSE.md).
+
 Please note that this project is released with a [Contributor Code of Conduct](CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md). By participating in this project you agree to abide by its terms.
 
 ## Getting Started
@@ -43,8 +45,6 @@ find it in the GitHub repository. Then click the `Edit` button. Make your
 changes, type in a commit message, and click the `Propose File Change` button.
 That’s it!
 
-You will be asked to sign the [GitHub Contributor License Agreement](https://cla.github.com/) for this project when you make your first pull request. 
-
 For more advanced changes, check out [the bootstrap instructions](https://github.com/github/choosealicense.com#run-it-on-your-machine) in the [project's readme](/README.md).
 
 ## Testing
diff --git a/spec/license_meta_spec.rb b/spec/license_meta_spec.rb
index df2957c..e9067a5 100644
--- a/spec/license_meta_spec.rb
+++ b/spec/license_meta_spec.rb
@@ -54,7 +54,7 @@ describe 'license meta' do
           example_url = example.values[0]
 
           context "the #{example_url} URL" do
-            let(:content)  { open(example_url).read }
+            let(:content)  { OpenURI.open_uri(example_url).read }
             let(:detected) { Licensee::ProjectFiles::LicenseFile.new(content, 'LICENSE').license }
 
             if example_url.start_with?('https://github.com/')
diff --git a/spec/spec_helper.rb b/spec/spec_helper.rb
index 2fb5fd8..1c309b1 100644
--- a/spec/spec_helper.rb
+++ b/spec/spec_helper.rb
@@ -73,7 +73,7 @@ end
 def spdx_list
   SpecHelper.spdx ||= begin
     url = 'https://spdx.org/licenses/licenses.json'
-    list = JSON.parse(open(url).read)['licenses']
+    list = JSON.parse(OpenURI.open_uri(url).read)['licenses']
     list.each_with_object({}) do |values, memo|
       memo[values['licenseId']] = values
     end
@@ -102,7 +102,7 @@ end
 def fsf_approved_licenses
   SpecHelper.fsf_approved_licenses ||= begin
     url = 'https://wking.github.io/fsf-api/licenses-full.json'
-    object = JSON.parse(open(url).read)
+    object = JSON.parse(OpenURI.open_uri(url).read)
     licenses = {}
     object.each_value do |meta|
       next unless (meta.include? 'identifiers') && (meta['identifiers'].include? 'spdx') && (meta.include? 'tags') && (meta['tags'].include? 'libre')
@@ -117,7 +117,7 @@ end
 def od_approved_licenses
   SpecHelper.od_approved_licenses ||= begin
     url = 'http://licenses.opendefinition.org/licenses/groups/od.json'
-    data = open(url).read
+    data = OpenURI.open_uri(url).read
     data = JSON.parse(data)
     licenses = {}
     data.each do |id, meta|