[belorn]

There will always be some who want to keep a broken system around if they can earn revenue from it. If money can be extracted, you can never get an complete 100% unanimous vote in fixing the system.

For people who owns land, some do not like regulations that forbid dumping toxins into it. But most societies know that forbidding the dumping of toxins are preferable over allowing it because of the ecological damage the toxins causes to society.

Patents causes an ecological damage to the software community. It might be profitable for a few, but for society as a whole it is a net loss. So long the cost-benefit analyze shows that, patents should have no place in software. Considering that patents are granted monopolies given by the government and enforced by the state, if society can't get more from software patents than it cost, society should not be in the businesses of granting said patents.