While I too am against software patents, I have some issues with one line of reasoning here. > software ages like yesterdays fish That is not true for a l

While I too am against software patents, I have some issues with one line of reasoning here. > software ages like yesterdays fish That is not true for a lot of software. The example has been very carefully selected, of course the most widely distributed piece of software that heavily interacts with the hardware, itself being developed at a rapid pace, changes a lot. However, a lot of commercially used software has a much more glacial pace. That is especially true for internally used software with no outside market, where a business simply has no reason to invest as long as it works. Decades old software is quite common - and with the aid of VMs we'll keep a lot of it for even longer now. I also miss even the attempt to show that even if I would just accept the statement at face value it would be relevant to why software patents are bad? (Again, a statement I actually agree with.) If it's obsolete a patent for the now obsolete piece of software should be less of a problem: > His comment is, Windows 3.1, 25 years old and who cares. ...because as you write, "who cares"? My main problem is that the entire concept is fuzzy as hell. For example, US patent law excludes "abstract ideas" [0], but software is an abstract idea. Looking at an early example for a software patent "...efficient memory management for the simplex algorithm...implemented by purely software means" [1] I can't find otherwise. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patent [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patent#Early_example_of_a_software_patent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patent#Early_example_...