dave winer: "i designed features of word, excel, powerpoint and the windows file system browser. my lawyers suggested that we file a patent on these inventions, but i felt then as i feel now that it is unethical for a software developer to try to prevent competition that way".

certainly, this is a point of view i can appreciate. however, it turned out many times that democracy needs to be well-fortified. just like it's nonsense to talk with neo-nazis (at least in most situations; and apologies for that bad comparison).

the people being able to file a patent for their work probably should think about an alternative way of protecting their opus against compainies like microsoft while still offering it to the equally open-minded community...