"Even trade secrets often only buy you a small amount of time these days before a competitor reverse engineers your technology" -- this tends to undermine the i

"Even trade secrets often only buy you a small amount of time these days before a competitor reverse engineers your technology" -- this tends to undermine the idea that good algorithms would remain secret without software patents. Someone else suggested that you can hide some kinds of algorithms if you only provide software-as-a-service. That way there's never even a binary available for reverse engineering. The same applies for software that is used just internally, like if an aircraft manufacturer has their own geometric modeling kernel that aircraft buyers never get near. But even with NDAs for employees and no external distribution of software, good ideas leak as people change jobs and find inspiration from systems they built/used before. Sometimes the main thing you need to know is that a particular line of research was fruitful; exactly reproducing the original implementation is less important. I tend to think that it would usually take less than the 20 years of patent exclusivity for a good, intended-to-remain-secret algorithm to diffuse out of a for-profit company, or to be independently invented again by somebody who will publish regardless of patentability. Pondering a world without software patents, is it worth it to learn about a good idea 10 years "late" (assuming secrecy is attempted), in exchange for being able to freely use that idea 10 years "early"? I say with complete confidence: maybe.