But don't we put "sweat and blood" into our code as well? Don't we, in fact, put more effort into our code than into our trees, which the sun freely shines on and which (in Hawaii) the rain freely falls on, on the earth a patch of which you call your property for reasons no more clear than the reasons you would call a piece of code you wrote your "intellectual property"?
Are the birds that eat the grapes and crap out the seeds stealing? They are propagating as they consume. Are your neighbors that eat the grapes and crap out the seeds merely consuming? Why is it that for your average Westerner, nature is always something consumed? Is it not more like a "given" resource that some of us put effort into harnessing, much like the free flow of ideas is directed into computer programs?
My point is that people will come up with no end of arguments for why code should be free, yet I just knew that the top comment on this post was going to be some moralist maintaining the importance of private property in one sphere, while implicitly maintaining the necessity of its transgression in another sphere.
And how much blood do you put into your trees?