BrowserUk,
The point you raised is a different problem then the one I am saying is addressed by licenses and copyright. I don't take exception with one thing you said and agree that it is a real problem - just not the one argued by the author of the article (as I understood it). His biggest concern was that if he sold it, he would have to start over for every client. Now that problem is easily solved by retaining the intellectual property and licensing it. Elsewhere in the article, he also mentions he has no problem agreeing to sell the project specific code if they also agree to the inevitable maintenance contract.

Getting back to your point: It is a UK based company I never heard of so I can't say how large or small it is. It doesn't really matter, it hardly seems a desirable situation to constantly policing your former clients to see if they are adhering to your license agreement. I wouldn't think the guy so much of an ass if he had presented his article in the following manner:

I have spent a lot of my personal time and resources developing libraries that help me build web based applications quickly. This is an enticing quality to have to prospective clients. One of the situations I often run into though is the thought that when I build a web application that they own my libraries as well. I would be happy to start from scratch so that the customer could own 100% of the code that I develop, but the reason I am sought in the first place is the speed with which I deliver solutions. So how do I deal with customers that want their cake and eat it too?

Since I tend to work with languages that don't readily compile to native binaries such as PHP, I have to rely on copyright and licenses to protect my intellectual property. I do not have the time nor resources to police all my clients to ensure they are adhering to the terms of the agreement, so I additionally obfuscate the portions that I used in building the custom web application that were not paid for - my personally developed libraries. I know that obfuscation is a poor solution but my personal experience has been problems ranging from non-malicious issues due to lack of understanding to the willful violation of the unscrupulous.

Cheers - L~R

In reply to Re^3: 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.