HACKER Q&A
📣 ta6de14e75cc31

Who owns source code in case of bespoke software dev?


Hello

throwaway for various reasons, sorry.

If a software consultancy develops bespoke software for their clients, then what is the usual way of handling the (IP) rights over the source code? I don't want to lock my customers in, so I'm happy to give them all the source behind the system they wanted me to implement, but naturally a significant portion of the code is reusable in other projects. Let's say I implement a script to provision certain AWS resources: I'd like to reuse it in my future projects, but I'd also like to provide it to the client.

Can you point me to info/resources that explain what the common/best practices are?

Thanks.

  👤 __d Accepted Answer ✓
No resources, but I found the easiest thing was to get agreement that FOSS components could be used to develop the software, subject to suitable licensing, and that any required changes to FOSS components could be contributed upstream. By tying those two things together, I've had minimal pushback.

Anything I wanted to use across projects I then released as FOSS, and as it was enhanced over use in multiple projects, those enhancements were contributed back per my agreement.

This requires a little investment up front to create the initial codebase, but I found that it's generally worthwhile to do something the first time for a client, and then rewrite it as the FOSS version, because then the open source version could avoid all the mistakes I'd made in the first prototype :-)

👤 brudgers
The details of copyright law depend on the jurisdiction and the contract.

If it matters, hire an attorney.

If it doesn't matter...well, it doesn't matter.

If you can't afford an attorney, the business is not viable.