Software patents are a distraction

“Software patents are frequently in the technology news, a
multi-billion dollar licensing model existing in parallel to the
traditional ways people acquire technology. Very few patents are
enforced, but those that are often result in the transfer of secret
and large amounts of money — not connected to the amount of
work required to create the invention, but to the thickness of the
wallet of the defendant.

“It is interesting that a man like Nathan Myhrvold would start a
company whose primary purpose seems to be acquiring software
patents. It means that one of the deep thinkers of Seattle does not
realize that software is math. In the 1930s, Alonzo Church created
a mathematical system known as lambda (λ) calculus, an early
programming language that used math as its foundation, and was
Turing-complete, which meant it could express any program written
today.”

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