I do sometimes see Red Hat being cited gratuitously as an example of a company that generally uses CLAs or that 'needs' CLAs - I was particularly bothered by a mailing list posting by Jesse Noller where he cited Red Hat of all companies as justification for why the Python Software Foundation needs its contributor agreement when someone in the Python community raised questions or concerns about it.
Matt Molyneaux, Christopher Allan Webber likes this.
@fontana, I've heard Noller say that Redhat wanted PSF to do a CLA as well, and it really surprised me. I think Steve Holden was the first person I heard say this.
FWIW, I've been kicking around the Free Software community longer than both of them (although Steve is around my age, he was in the proprietary Unix community for longer), and I don't recall this at all!
In fact, if anyone deserves credit for paying attention to the licensing of issues Python earlier than anyone, it's FSF. I remember one of my very first political negotiations for FSF when I became Executive Director was with Guido over dealing with those goofy set of Python licenses that his various employers had created. (But that's a licensing issue, not CLA).