Who owns the code?

"the problem is that the existing code is licensed to clients already and can’t be open-sourced without their permission"

It is fine (and indeed common) to make code available under multiple incompatible licenses. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-licensing

At least, I assume that your clients aren't really insisting on a "you cannot open source any of this code" clause in their contract?

also: please ask your web team to get rid of that tynt nonsense. and make the comment box larger.

By robtoo on 18 Jun 2010

Incompatible licences

It's not really fine to release your code under agreements which aren't compatible. It means that your obligations under one agreement conflict with your obligations under another one. It means you're stuck. Try to avoid doing this.

By steviesteveo on 24 Jun 2010

Need to address the fundamentals

Having read both articles and comments I think there are three fundamental issues:

Firstly, it seems that you don't have a standard set of T&C's that are attached to any "letter of understanding" you may draft, a practise that is generally frowned upon. If a client wishes you to proceed 'yesterday' then at least commence work with minimual contract cover with the "letter of understanding" being T&M based agreement with a report/specification as the deliverable. Over and above this, you may take the risk and incur the cost of commencing manufacture of software during this time, but no software is actually delivered until such time as a contract is signed (in the ideal world, you complete the development before the contract is signed and so deliver a product to its first customer complete with a price tag fully reflecting the risks and costs of development and the value of rapid delivery!)

Secondly, it seems that many software people are under the false impression that their standard libraries are part of their 'toolkit', this is totally wrong!

Taking your analogy of the plumber, if you take a look in their van, you will see that they carry around TOOLS and STOCK PARTS. In completing a job such as replacing the kitchen tap, a plumber will: with the customers involvement purchase a new tap, secondly they will fit it using their tools and stock parts as necessary to join the new tap to the old water pipe. When the plumber leaves, you are left with (the bill) a working tap and associated installed parts that you now own and can do what you like with, additionally, the plumber will has assigned to you any manufacturers warranties associated with the parts supplied and added their warranty. Translating this into software, you can see: your computer(s) and SDE are your tools and to some extent your van, your standard libraries are your stock parts (which may be stored within your SDE/van) and the tap a COTS package.

Taking this approach, you can now correctly account for and price the maintenance and use of your libraries, which in turn will lead you to selecting an appropriate licensing strategy for them, which in turn will feed into your standard T&C's.

Thirdly and finally, you are now in a better position to determine what it is that you are actually delivering and its value: Are you just providing a body shop or are you delivering a solution/product to it's first (and maybe only) customer? The outcome of this thinking will reflect not only in your pricing and standard T&Cs, but also in the way you package your deliverables along with the ownership and disclaimers on them.

You only need to look at the history of Microsoft/IBM DOS to see the importance of getting the IPR and Commercial exploitation clauses right. Also major package vendors will contract for installation and configuration/tailoring of their package, even though such configuration can include the development of substantive amounts of software.

Having established you standard T&Cs, you now have a defined starting point in any customer negotiations.

By RBell6 on 13 Jul 2010