What are you proposing anyways? That every commit come with a patent search?
I would propose that everyone wasting their time and effort to discuss this issue here, would rather spend that time working towards putting an end to software patents instead.
That would be a much better use of the time, IMHO.
What about adding an extra line to the license that indicates that the copyright owners also give all patent licenses which are both in their power to grant and also needed for exercise of the copyright license and require that new code contributions use this license with the extra clause.
Now, no patent owner is likely to accept those terms, but then we can save our breath for later discussion.
Strictly speaking I also don't think ti is the same thing as a global public license for the patent, since it would only apply to cases where there was a copyright license tied to the PostgreSQL source code contributed by the patent holder. So you still have taint problems but probably not to the same extent.
