Software Patents Will Not Kill Open Source Software

says Darryl LeCount at NewsForge:

The open source community is trying desperately to stop any kind of patenting, while large IT corporations such as Microsoft are trying to lobby the parliament into allowing just about any software technique through. In the midst of all this, doomsayers have been predicting the death of Linux and open source software. Open source projects such as MPlayer are now posting huge "The End Is Nigh" notices on their sites. But things aren't as dark as they might seem.

Don't get me wrong -- software patents are bad, very bad. People like Florian Müller of NoSoftwarePatents.com are fighting for a noble cause. But it's a fallacy to believe that software patenting will kill Linux.

Prior posts: Software Should Be No More Patentable than the Rules of Chess (June 3, 2005).