Z:gnu-www-ja-stallman-mec-india--694c1e-I have been in software since/en

I have been in software since before software patents existed, and I know that software patents do a lot of harm and essentially no good. In the old days, ideas came along. Either people in a university had an idea, or somebody had an idea while he was working on developing software. And either way, these ideas got published, and then everyone could use them. Now why did the software publishers publish these ideas? Because they knew that the big job was writing the program.