> I mean, if you can use the software without the patent license, what is the patent license giving you?
Facebook may or may not have some patents covering concepts or algorithms used in React. If they do (nobody is aware of any), then they could sue you for using React, or any other framework which uses the same underlying concepts (eg, Preact, maybe Vue, possibly Angular 2.x, etc., depending on what the patents cover). If they did sue you, a valid patent grant (which you obtain by using React) would be a very strong defence, and would be quite useful.
The value is real...but quite narrow in scope. :)