Does America's new first-to-file patent system hinder small FOSS projects? My thinking is: I have a cool idea for a free software project, but I want to get community involvement, so I write up a prototype and release it under GPL, but a big company sees what I'm working on and patents the idea before I can because they have money and lawyers. Are there funds or something to support obtaining patents or patent licenses for new GPL projects?

"How did this happen" is a question for detectives. "How do things like this happen" is a question for scientists. Even if some lab ends up generating a tiger by carefully zapping a chemical soup, or even if God decides to appear to a panel of fifty scientists and demonstrate his ability to create a whale by blinking, or even if no new data ever presents itself, the question of how our biological ancestors came into existence will always remain scientifically unanswerable.

Since schooling is in question, the "obvious" flaw underlying this whole debate is the inclusion of detective work in a science class. If any group would consider their explanations of this issue worthy of curriculum, they should lobby to include it in an "Abiogenesis Investigations" class.