I'm just arguing against patents on software, not patents in general. Novels aren't protected by patents, yet people still manage to write books. Athletic tra

I'm just arguing against patents on software, not patents in general. Novels aren't protected by patents, yet people still manage to write books. Athletic training techniques aren't patentable, yet people still manage to innovate and share knowledge there. Recipes are only protected by trade secrets, yet people manage to innovate when it comes to food; people publish cookbooks, restaraunts come out with new dishes. Fashion designs are only protected by copyright, and yet fashion moves at a lightning pace. Mathematical and logical proofs aren't patentable, yet people still do mathematical research, and talk about it. And keep in mind that software patents weren't even recognized until the 1980's, and weren't widely granted until the mid-90's. The majority of the history of computing has advanced without patent protection. I'm not sure why you'd think that software advancement would be hindered without patents, or that conversation would somehow die out. Patents for software are notoriously useless to read, and only an infinitesimal part of any system is patented anyway, and then generally only as a landmine against future competitors or to enforce mutually-assured destruction. The vast majority of an application's "secret sauce" is protected by trade secrets, not by patents, and copyright guards against the actual theft of resources. I don't think that patents in the software world really do much to open up what would otherwise be a trade secret, with the possible exception of things like compression algorithms. I think that's fundamentally different from how patents function in, say, the pharmaceutical industry, where patent protection does encourage sharing of information.