I don't understand why the author needs to bring FOSS into the discussion. The same argument could be made for regular patents in as much as someone could inven

I don't understand why the author needs to bring FOSS into the discussion. The same argument could be made for regular patents in as much as someone could invent something like a way to make water potable, and then a charity wants to mass-produce them and give them to poor people in Africa, and the patent would prevent that. See pharmaceutical patents for a similar thing. There are other arguments as to why it interacts with FOSS software (patent minefields etc) that affect regular software developers too, so there isn't a need to separate FOSS from regular software development. Those aspects should be the focus, not on the harm to the public.