While it's true that you only lose your license to the patents, not the code, I don't see how you can argue the grant isn't a restriction of your freedom? Surel

While it's true that you only lose your license to the patents, not the code, I don't see how you can argue the grant isn't a restriction of your freedom? Surely any license whose conferred rights are predicated on the recipient not being able to take particular actions, up to and including saying particular things, must be considered to be restricting freedoms, even if those restrictions are in exchange for other freedoms granted? Of course, all free software licenses involve some exchange of freedoms: You give up your ability to publish closed-source modifications of the software in exchange for being able to use and modify it at all. The question is whether the freedoms you are asked to give up are reasonable in exchange for what you gain. A patent grant that restricts your freedom to launch patent infringement litigation against other users of the software seem reasonable to me. Whereas a grant that is invalidated simply by alleging, through any action, that any of the original author's patents are invalid, does not.