In a capitalist society, businesses and enterprises assign priorities to their
growth and benefit, rather than emotional issues like humanity and poverty.
Patents are here to stay, regardless of the efforts and movements against
them. Patents aren't necessarily bad; but they have been overused and
abused too. I despise patenting life-saving drugs, mouse clicks and gestures
and the likes, though.
Consider an example: company A puts millions and thousands of man-hours
into developing a new technology. How can it let the rival B reap benefits of
its labour for free? A patent will ensure further development and survival of A.
Believe me, I know of many examples like this, when a company rejected
proposal of developing new technology, only because of the fear of its rivals.
Clearly, they couldn't afford to develop something that would have been copied
and forked by dozens.
GNU has become successful because of the free labour it offers. Numerous
young and talented developers have contributed their work without any rewards.
And companies like RedHat, Novell and IBM are making millions for the software
they never developed. What do they developers get?
IMHO, GNU is more about "free labour" than it is about "freedom" and other
gimmicks and buzz-words. Know why more and more Debian developers are
joining Ubuntu these days? Because they get the attention, name and money.
Here's a haiku from me:-
Free, open, libre
All pills, but no choices;
Welcome to the GNUtopia.