Great article in eWeek on the anti patent views of two of the MySQL co-founders (and some notes on MySQL 5.0): MySQL Founders: Kill All the Patents
'[Patents] just stall innovation. Look at an extension of patents. I don't see any difference in a software program and a recipe in a book. It's the same thing to me as a programmer. It's them saying, "You're not allowed to write the sentence you're writing right now because somebody patented it."'