Having my name on a bunch of software patents - and, yes, I tried to get my name off them, but was not allowed - I can fairly confidently say: There is not A single worthy software patent out there. You know, one that is "not obvious to someone skilled in the art" and that actually protects a monetary investment. Software patent are a scourge of the software industry. Patents are designed to protect costly research;…
I agree in general, but can think of at least one counterpoint: https://terathon.com/blog/decade-slug.html Actually novel implementation is protected, paid the author's bills, and was dedicated to the public domain recently - no massive corp involved.
Parents point seems to be about that if this author of Slug wouldn't have patent it in the first place, then in general that work would have had an larger impact in the software industry, compared to this situation where the author did patent it.
Case(s) in point: all the comments on HN who independently came up with the same algorithm but couldn't publish it as FOSS because they found a patent covering it.