Wordpress are just starting what could easily be a multi-year rewrite as a result and Drupal has specifically excluded React from evaluation - both on the basis of the patent issues

True, but PHP development has always been split from the rest of the web-dev community.

React has managed to bring together people in C#, Python, Ruby, and Erlang to name a few languages... who all previously used different frameworks, or just jQuery.

Yes, it is clearly in wordpress' best interests to spend all that time and money to preserve their very important right to sue facebook for violating wordpress' software patents in the future.

/sarcasm

Do you work with any lawyers in your company or peer group? I doubt they view the patent issue as "crazy hypotheticals".

The only lawyers I know with software patent experience consider the fuss absolutely rediculous.

It gives you more rights. Full stop, end of story.

So would I. But patents scare people, and rightly so.

This is a multi horse race and even if you are not scared of patents it might be unwise to bet on the horse you think will scare other people. (Case in point, Wordpress.)

Anyone who would wield the bullshit that is a software patent against facebook in a lawsuit deserves to lose licenses to everything.

Fact of the matter is, it's just posturing. Software patents are utter bullshit and the facebook license clause reflects this.