Bill Gates (& other communists) [news.com.com]

It has always seemed clear to me that anyone who supports patents that cover software is either naive or is happy to use a law past it's intent in order to hinder competition.

Now we know Bill Gates is not naive, and thanks to the historical context in the linked article we know that Bill Gates is well aware of the negative power of software patents.

Here's what Bill Gates told Microsoft employees in 1991:

"If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today...A future start-up with no patents of its own will be forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose."

Which makes it odd that Bill suggested that anyone opposing software patents must be a communist. Actually it's not odd—it's exactly what you expect since honesty and clarity aren't exactly hallmarks of Microsoft spin.

In fact what does surprise me is that Gates chose to backpedal furiously in an interview with Gizmodo. As summarized by Linuxworld:

Gates's point, he said, is that there's a spectrum of viewpoints on this issue, from the extreme of believeing that there should be no patent system at all to the opposite extreme (he didn't specify how that would be characterized).

More commentary of Bill's "Communist" outburst at Thinking Monkey.