programs regardless of the domestic patent law in any particular system or

  locale.

\end{itemize}

The following two subsections discuss in order each of the above mentioned

classes of patent commitments.

\subsection{The Contributor's Explicit Patent License}

Specifically, the ideal might have been for GPLv3 to feature a patent license

grant triggered by all acts of distribution of GPLv3-covered works.  The FSF

considered it during the GPLv3 drafting process, but many patent-holding

far-reaching impact of the patent license grant on the patent holder is

disproportionate to the act of merely distributing code without modification

patent assets to exercise requisite diligence in reviewing all the

GPL-covered software that it provides to others.  Some expressed particular

concern about the consequences of ``inadvertent'' distribution.

The argument that the impact of the patent license grant would be

``disproportionate'',  that is to say unfair, is not valid. Since

software patents are weapons that no one should have, and using them for

aggression against free software developers is an egregious act (thus

preventing that act cannot be unfair). 

However, the second argument seems valid in a practical sense.  A

typical GNU/Linux distribution includes thousands of programs.  It would

be quite difficult for a re-distributor with a large patent portfolio to

review all those programs against that portfolio every time it receives

and passes on a new version of the distribution.  Moreover, this question