"And it is overall not a pretty picture." Why not, they are prospering pretty well overall - don't you think? I agree that to the inventors of IP it's a hassle, but the argument that patents in it's current form are a benefit from an overall systemic point of view has yet to be provided. Imho it would probably be more effective overall if we had no IP protection at all. The argument that no-one would take the financial risk to innovate does not hold - if I look at the local Chinese market where someone steals a jewellery design it kind of seems a proven point to me.

I don't think I can fully agree. I think software development may be hard, but that's never the main reason projects fail. The main reason projects fail in my 10+ years experience is because of product managers, not coders.

Product managers I have seen (and I have seen many) often don't know zilch about technology, but even worse they usually also don't know much about their market, target audience/users, User Interfaces, project management, etc.
Consequently they simply don't know what they want and aren't able to explain it in one coherent paragraph of sentences. Once they would be able to explain it, the actual coding would be half as bad.

So if this guy complains that their projects back in the days at salon went bad, I'm not suprised. He's not a coder after all, he was a typical clueless product manager - started out as a journalist and suddenly he was responsible for a type of product he knew nothing about: CMSs, in addition to having no other qualification in software development or a related area (UI design, project management).

So am I surprised this project didn't succeed? LOL, of course not.

You wouldn't let a journalist build a space shuttle or a car now would you? But software? Sure, software is easy, anyone can do it. In the end, it's probably not harder than building a car, but not easier either. it just takes proper skills for all roles in the team, is all.