Software patents

An interesting article about software patents by Philip Greenspun.

Two quotes stand out to me. The opening shot (which you get to read it yourself), and further down this one:

I was asked "Why didn't you patent this yourself, if you developed it first?" My reply was "It only took me an hour to build; if I went down to the patent office after every hour of programming, I wouldn't get very much done."

I can relate to this. At least once, I coded something at some job that 10 years later was covered by some stupid software patent.