I'm not entirely certain on where I stand concerning patents for software. Part of me likes the idea, but another, larger portion of me cannot quite see how an idea, an algorithm, can be patentable. Copyrighted? Yes, that makes sense to me, but patents - I had always thought they were for tangible objects.

This blog entry at the Free Software Magazine discusses it in more detail, especially with a potential court case involving the legitimacy of software patents due to appear before the Supreme Court soon. Maybe they will solve the problem for us all.