Rob O'Callahan, one of "Mozilla's senior software developers, and manager of our Auckland-based development team and also our worldwide layout engine team" writes about Software Patents. He is against them.

If you don't think this statement is significant consider that fact that Mozilla has been just about the only organisation that has ever successfully broken a Microsoft monopoly. It did this through openness. The fact that Rob persuaded Mozilla to start a development team in Auckland is also pretty significant.

Here is his blog post:

http://robert.ocallahan.org/2010/07/mozilla-and-software-patents-in-new_06.html

and some of his reasoning:

"every developer is an inventor; coming up with new ways of doing things is not exceptional, it's what our developers do every single day. Invention created at such a rate does not deserve or benefit from years of monopoly protection. Indeed, it will be crippled if we are forced to play the patent system "to the hilt", to acquire vast numbers of our own software patents and to navigate the minefield of other people's patents."