software patents kill open source and innovation (Score 1)

as a developer, i used to relish the idea of creating a new product. Now, I wonder if I should ever post another one; I just cringe at the thought of all of the work I will put into it and will potentially face many lawsuits and pay out a lot in royalties to someone who did not contribute any work to my project, all because the US government granted a patent on what to me is a rather obvious idea. Worse yet, the more complex it is, the more likely I am to infringe. And even worse, if I make my project open source, I increase my risk dramatically since my methods are exposed for all to review and claim that they infringe on some patent buried deep in the annuls of the USPTO database. How do we make the government see how terrible this is for innovation in the USA?