It seems like you might be saying that if a union can't satisfy every member of the profession it represents then it shouldn't exist. I don't agree. I feel like if you run a union that represents a profession of which the overwhelming majority of employees feel one way about an issue, then you lobby on that side of the issue. There will always be a minority that disagrees. That minority must then decide whether their views on that particular issue are strong enough to outweigh all the other benefits of the union.

Or maybe they already did the calculation and have already decided it's not worth it. You can't say people will make up their minds and then insist that they have it all wrong.

Besides, all the replies here are ignoring one of the major points... that lobbying as a when can be detrimental. Software patent policy isn't on the ballot and is maybe the 30th most important issue for voters, so it isn't all that relevant when picking a candidate to support. Gun issues, immigration, abortion, health care, and other issues are way more important to most. Donating based on right to repair ignoring the other issues is very atypical.

Fixing IPR conditions for employees doesn't have to involve abolition of software patents; a much more workable plank for a software union might be an end to restrictive IPR clauses in contracts that require developers to assign and later (even after leaving) defend patents based on their work. You could own and benefit from a software patent and still be very much in favor of having the option to participate in your employers patent plans.

Isn't your counter-example about as unrealistic as the notion that such a union would want to promote software patents? As in, that's a zany example but the (more-or-less) inverse seems about as zany.

I'm not sure I follow (but then I didn't write carefully either). Are you saying it sounds zany that a software developers union would lobby employers to end restrictive IPR clauses in employee contracts? Because that would be pretty high up on my list of demands (those same IPR clauses make it tricky for employee developers to go off and start their own companies).

Conveniently, I didn't read too carefully! This bit is probably what I should have been replying to, minus the zany:

looser IPR rules more favorable to rank-and-file developers seems like such a basic, shared concern that it's likely to be a plank of any organized labor in software development.

For SV specifically, I have a hard time seeing this as a major issue let alone an organizing one - mostly on the basis of personal impressions but also historically - there would be no SV at all if this was some serious impediment at a time when patents mattered a lot more than current software patents do. Why do you think it's such a big deal? It does pop up a lot on forums but lots of things do and more often than not, it's people being surprised and shocked (not entirely unreasonably) at the first AoI they get when they start working around here. But in practice, these (among halfway decent actors) are almost never used in a coercive or draconian fashion.