Perhaps it comes down to an interpretation about what's "easy". Evidently, based on patents being issued, it is easy to get a patent in the sense that you don'

Perhaps it comes down to an interpretation about what's "easy". Evidently, based on patents being issued, it is easy to get a patent in the sense that you don't need a novel or nontrivial invention to do so. You don't need to go through the process to observe the results. Perhaps there is a lot of paperwork, and in that sense it's not "easy". Or perhaps it is not "easy" to convince the patent office to accept trivial patents or patents on nonpatentable subject matter like math, but the volume of these things suggests that it can't be that hard. If you knew millions of high school students write an OS as a project each year, you could safely conclude it's not that hard, even if you haven't done it.