Here is a direct quote from the paper from which this blog post was made:
Also, software should not be patentable.18 19 20 21 22
The practice should be abolished immediately for the good
of mankind and whomsoever disagrees with me on this owes
me $1 billion in royalties because I patented the concept
of being an asshole.
EDIT: Mirrors:
Paper: http://cdn.taoeffect.com/other/nupic/index.html#conclusion
If anything, the change that was made by the company here is even worse because it's obviously ambiguous. What exactly does it mean for a patent claim to "exist"? Are we talking about patents already granted? Patents filed? Patents that might be filed?
This misses the point. If you want an atypically wide patent grant (covering not just patents infringed by your contributed code, but also to future contributions by other people which infringe a patent of yours), then that should be done openly and explicitly. Not by the backdoor with a clause that doesn't appear to do that but could be interpreted as doing do if you took it to its logical conclusion.
(Though it's pretty clear that doing do wasn't actually their intention, given their FAQ denies that interpretation - see DannyBee's post)