Actually, open-source is the exact opposite of what patents are intended to do - patents discourage trade secrets that die with their inventors by giving their holders a right to timed exclusivity (regardless of whether other people know how to copy them or not), in exchange for publicly documenting said trade secrets.<p>Open-source is essentially just a tool for collaborating on software more easily (ignoring the Free Software side for a sec), but which requires <i>giving up</i> propriety over the software.