Svante,
...in which he asserted that he "owns" his code, and that someone who paid him to write it should not....

I think this guy is an ass but that's not what you have written isn't what I understood from the article.

He knows he doesn't operate the way most customers expect and he also knows that if he made this clear up front (contract), he would lose business so instead he insists on a substantial payment up front so when the customer becomes savvy he doesn't get left holding the bag. Did I mention, I think this guy is an ass.

In a nutshell, what he is saying is that when you hire him to deliver a solution, what you are paying for is the end product and nothing else. He goes on to say he is more than happy to sell you the portions of the code that he had to create specifically for your end product at an additional cost. What he is unwilling to sell is the libraries he has created prior to taking on your project. The question is why?

Well, the reason he gives is because he would have to create it in a new form and that it would take longer and cost more. I think this is a relatively simple problem to solve with copyright and licenses. That is, if the customer truly didn't pay to have them developed. Why then hide code that is legally your intellectual property? It seems to me that he has chosen job security through obscurity and shady business practices. If he made the code legible then anyone looking at it could be unscrupulous and then start using it themselves to under bid him. Did I mention, I think he is an ass.

Cheers - L~R

In reply to Re: What I am paid for by Limbic~Region
in thread What I am paid for by Svante

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.