do you put restrictions on customer software?

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yacahuma
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do you put restrictions on customer software?

Post by yacahuma »

When you are hired to do a custom program, do you put restrictions on who can use it?

I was paid to do a program, and they asked me if is ok to share the program with other parts of the company. I told the person that I will get back to them. I think since they paid they can do whatever they want with it. But then I started thinking about, what others do...

What is the norm?

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John Cartwright
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Re: do you put restrictions on customer software?

Post by John Cartwright »

It depends: did you sell them the rights to the software, or did you sell them a license to the software. If you have sold them the rights to the software, then it is theirs to do wish as they please. However, if your agreement is license based, then they must adhere to the license restrictions.

So to answer your question, the norm uses licenses.
alex.barylski
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Re: do you put restrictions on customer software?

Post by alex.barylski »

This is where it really helps to have policies in place before hand.

1. If you write software for someone and they intended to resell it -- you should charge significantly more to sell the license to your customer.

2. If you building custom software for a client who is going to use it internally, you should charge less as you can re-sell the software to other clients

Cheers,
Alex
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yacahuma
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Re: do you put restrictions on customer software?

Post by yacahuma »

John Cartwright,

So you are saying, even if the client pay for you to develop it, you will still charge them again if they want to use the software somewhere else?
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yacahuma
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Re: do you put restrictions on customer software?

Post by yacahuma »

http://www.ahinc.com/hcopyrig.htm

WOW. Amazing . After more than 20 years programming. I always thought that, if a client paid for it, they could do whatever they wanted. I guess it makes sense, in terms of me not wanting other people to look at my libraries or using them to develop new code.
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John Cartwright
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Re: do you put restrictions on customer software?

Post by John Cartwright »

Sorry for the late response.. been a bit busy.
yacahuma wrote:John Cartwright,

So you are saying, even if the client pay for you to develop it, you will still charge them again if they want to use the software somewhere else?
Again, it all depends on your agreement. I normally develop intranet tools for the company I belong to, so I'm not very familiar with licensing practices. However, consider for a moment pobably every piece of software you have ever bought commercially falls under this category of being licensed. From experience, the licenses generally belong to either a single/multi developer license, a single/multi user license, or an unlimited usage license (i.e., businesses) -- although the terms are subject to each individual license. Using Microsoft Windows OS's as an example: you are buying the single user license to use the software (for 1 computer), you are not buying the ownership of the software.
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yacahuma
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Re: do you put restrictions on customer software?

Post by yacahuma »

thank you
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