>The "commercial market" will be drastically leveled as free applications
>are published, become known, and "compete" against commercially sold
>applications.  In this environment, patent law will take an interesting
>turn and if we're all lucky, software patenting as we know it will
>cease.

I fear that proprietary software companies will see software patents (and
interface copyrights) as a method of preventing free software from possibly
competing, and will use them heavily if they can get away with it.