Otter,

regarding your first point, of course it's true that science had an ethic of sharing before software. In the first draft, there were several paragraphs explaining the role in distributing information that scientists such as Nicolas Peiresc played in the 17th century and noting that RMS was originally inspired by scientific ethics. See the middle of this for his clearest explanation http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/shouldbefree.html.

I cut that out because it seemed obvious, the Einstein quote gives some context, and it's really important and challenging not to bore peoeple writing about science in a political magazine. Maybe that was an editing mistake. But I certainly don't disagree with you or think that Linus influenced Einstein.

WRT your second point, as you surely know patents have a mixed impact on sharing. They do allow more information to get into the public domain, but they also allow for hoarding and blocking other research (see the Costa Rican rice example). I certainly don't think that they are entirely nefarious. My contention is simply that the overall trend is clearly going in the wrong direction (the lack of sharing amond geneticists is the clearest evidence) and that overuse of patents, particularly upstream patents, makes the problem worse.