&gt; doing away with software patents might also harm any commercial motivation to produce a service with even a hint of transparency into how that service does what it does<p>Do you have examples of FOSS or other projects benefiting from companies revealing information through patent filing? To rephrase, what exactly do we lose out if patents didn&#x27;t exist?<p>Even if there is some marginal value in the knowledge sharing that happens in patent filings, not allowing software patents would be a much bigger benefit. To support this point, we can look at the prevalence and utility of Open Source software projects; which work without patent protection.