Personal opinion, but I think this is probably good for professors / post-docs, but a horrible idea for the software community as a whole. Algorithm patenting and closed gardens are probably the worst hinderances to software development that exist right now. It feeds the big boys, who can easily pay, while imposing additional taxes on new folks. Marching Cubes is the classic example of this, but its easy to think of others. Lets say they pattent holographic image recognition / stabilization, or O(N) methods for N-body simulation, or pattern recognition that order of magnitude outstrips SVD or K-means methods. Then everything will have a choice: pay them their pound, use it without paying, or find a functionally similar version that is so different as to not terrify everyone of lawsuit hell. Marching cubes, you only managed to set graphics back by 17 years, meet marching tets.
actually many algorithm developers choose to share their source code on our platform. They still have an opportunity of making money because when our users run their algorithms (even if they are open source) on our platform they get paid.
