Does the Apache license provide any benefit if I don't have any patents?

Question

As far as I understand, the Apache 2.0 license is a fairly permissive license. It seems to me as if the only difference between the Apache license and other licenses (such as the MIT license), is the inclusion of a patent clause.

From Against what does the Apache 2.0 patent clause protect? and Interference of Software Patents with Free & Open Source Software, it seems to me as if the inclusion of the patent clause does two things:

• Actually let you use the patent, if any are involved
• Provide a sense of relief to the end-user, as you now have a right to use the patent.

From my perspective, #1 doesn't help. I'm 16 and I don't think I'll ever want to get involved with stuff like patents. #2 seems to not affect me directly, but creates relief for my end-users, which is beneficial.

However, does the Apache license provide any benefits, to me, or my end users? While the Apache license is a fairly simple and trivial license relatively speaking, what about patents makes the Apache license so advantageous over other permissive licenses?

Answer 1

Thinking of this a bit more, it benefits large projects, and sort of gives a clear answer to why many companies open source projects use the Apache license (Apple's Swift programming language comes to mind). The patent clause helps the health of the project, not necessarily the end users, or the maintainers (which was my perspective).

Many large open source projects have tons of activity. With so much activity, you'd naturally get a lot of pull requests and contributions from various users. Even if I don't have any patents, these contributors may have patents, it gets a patent license from them as well, assisting the "relief" aspect that I noted in the question. This is enforced by §5 of the license:

5. Submission of Contributions. Unless You explicitly state otherwise,
  any Contribution intentionally submitted for inclusion in the Work
  by You to the Licensor shall be under the terms and conditions of
  this License, without any additional terms or conditions.
  Notwithstanding the above, nothing herein shall supersede or modify
  the terms of any separate license agreement you may have executed
  with Licensor regarding such Contributions.

Therefore, any contribution, unless otherwise stated, has to come with a patent license. This benefits the health of the project.