Office applications Toolkit

Story: Microsoft ordered to stop selling Word

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Code is copyright, but ideas aren't

Software patents wouldn't be so bad if they were almost impossible to obtain. The problem, in the US at least, is that you can apparently patent any trivial or obvious use of software. You can even patent using a tool for something it was actually designed to do — XML was specifically designed to allow custom vocabularies, so the patent in this case seems to have been awarded for just saying "you can use this general tool to do this specific job".

Code you write is subject to copyright, even when not in physical form, and I'm not sure whether the case you're referring to is still valid case law — do you have the case name? Certainly source code is copyright, and no-one can use that without your permission, whether you give it individually or using an open source licence.

As for making money while giving the code away, there's a growing recognition that the value of software doesn't lie in the source code itself, but the knowledge of how it works and how to apply it to a particular task. Having access to a Michelin starred Chef's recipe book isn't much good if you don't have the skill, resources or time to follow the instructions it contains. The same applies to any non-trivial code, and there's the opportunity to make money.

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