Z:gnu-www-ja-danger-of-software-patents--fb7e5c-No. Before there were softwar/en

No. Before there were software patents, a lot of software developers kept the details of their programs secret. But they usually wouldn't keep any of the general ideas secret, because that they realized that the big job in developing good software was not picking your general ideas, it was implementing a lot of ideas together. So they would publish, [or] they would let their employees publish, in scholarly journals any interesting new ideas that they'd had. So now, they'll patent those new ideas. It has very little to do with developing a useful program, and just letting people know some ideas doesn't give them a program. Besides, most of the ideas, the thousands of ideas you've combined in your program, are known anyway.