Patent source code?

[Kyle Fenton]

http://www.apple.com/about/w3c/

As some people know, that they have copied code from other websites to put on their own, and it was legal, per se.

But now the W3c standards, were always patent free, but now it seems that some future standards of code, you may have to pay for. Now for most people, this doesn't affect them. But for people like webmasters, this could be a future determent for using new code to enhance your web site.

[nwagers]

Though patents may soon exist, how much of a deterrant will they be? I know it's not right, but many people don't care. I think that source code will still just be ripped off. Being a programmer myself I know that nothing is safe from piracy. Just my thoughts.... -- Nick Wagers

[Kyle Fenton]

I know of some websites that were shut down for having infringing software on it, or infringing movies. This is especially true if you rent space on a website. So if you have infringing source code, that would strip your website down to nothing.

[Matt Leese]

I don't know if you guys are clear on exactly what the W3C is thinking about doing. What it is doing is considering the ability for standards that they create to be based on techniques that are patented. This, in general, will have very little effect on those who run websites. Instead, there will be more issues for those who create programs that view the various standards that the W3C create.

This has nothing to do with "patented" source code. In fact, you can't patent source code. You can copyright it however and the W3C has no right to tell you you can't copyright your website or Javascript code you use in it, etc. As far as software is concerned, you can only patent an algorithm; note that this only applies to patents in some countries (including the US). Software patents are not valid in much of Europe for example. Given that most web pages are copyrighted, I would be extrememly hesitant about "borrowing" any sort of code from them.

Matt