> "Hey everyone, I thought of this and wrote it down, none of you wrote it down before so now it's my idea for the next 30 years" In this case you are right, i

> "Hey everyone, I thought of this and wrote it down, none of you wrote it down before so now it's my idea for the next 30 years" In this case you are right, it stiffles progress instead of helping it. But what about the case where "Hey, it took us 20 manyears of research to discover this, and when we release it, it's up for grabs for anyone" In that case, you want to have a patent system so the research can have a ROI. But the latter case never happens in software, and so I'm very happy Europe doesn't have any software patents.