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We did a deal like this with a giant IT company with a 3 letter acronym for a name. We had a "break glass" option. If the client wanted to take over the code,
by abraae 8y ago
We did a deal like this with a giant IT company with a 3 letter acronym for a name.
We had a "break glass" option. If the client wanted to take over the code, they had to pay us a prearranged amount. The actual amount in our case was about 2 x the lifetime revenue to us of the deal from memory.
This seemed to work well, they had insurance, but we knew that if they ever broke the glass we'd be laughing to the bank.
At one stage things got tetchy and we hoped they would break the glass - but they never did.
- blihp 8y agoSomething along these lines makes much more sense: the other party got the insurance they want, your company got a non-trivial payment in the event that they walk away against the customer's wishes. Both parties have incentive to make things work. That's very different than 'if we ever stop offering this product, we'll just open source it'
- abraae 8y agoI think it works well for megacorp clients too. A future option for a few million dollars is way easier for them to get over the line than some strange, and intangible open source scenario, when they don't want the code ever open sourced anyway.