3 ms·

Unless you've been paid for it (work for hire) your work product is your own.

tluyben2 7y ago
Can you change that contractually in the US? I know here you can. And if you are a freelancer, you can have default company terms which say you own it all, even when paid. I had very few changing that default contract and my last few paid jobs rather did a ‘partnership’ as in shared ownership for a lower hourly with an option to buy outright for shares and/or money at a later date. There are more ways to skin a cat. I am not sure big ( especially software) companies (in other, more litigious countries than mine) would entertain things like this, but if you do not try... For instance, I did a small intranet for a very large company (for my country); because it was not their core business, and as such they did not care if we kept the (c) or sold the source to others as long as they had eternal perpetual rights to do whatever with it as long as they do not sell or use it outside their company. They reasoned that if I have more clients, they might get features and/or bugfixes for free. They did, up to some point and it made me turn my 1 man services company into a product company with staff. Which was fun but a steep learning curve, especially with regards to the money required for the growth of such a company. Their lawyers made up a very fair contract (again this was not their core business so they genuinely knew they would never want to sell this themselves) which had clauses to protect them and us if they exited etc. I had this happen far more often; at the right level, many companies, especially none software companies, will be up for this if they benefit financially or otherwise. Recently (different company; only services again) I had a large car maker suggesting we sell a small LoB app we made for them to their competitors so they would, again, share the financial pain of bugfixes and intellectual gain of new features. Kind of a product/services mix without the pressure of roadmaps, growth etc (all companies pay per hour and get all versions, including forks for others, but not forks by others unless the other parties specifically agree). So kind of contained-closed-open-source way of working, which is far easier for the corp lawyers to wrap their heads around than throwing things into the actual open. Also the quality demands code, community wise, are far less important. Let’s be real; most LoB software is a burning heap of crap; usually first put together parttime by someone of the departmental business and then passed to an external company when growing out of bounds (getting too much uptake internally). This time we could basically do a rewrite, but that is not always the case (remember; my business is being paid for every single hour).

Can you change that contractually in the US? I know here you can. And if you are a freelancer, you can have default company terms which say you own it all, even when paid. I had very few changing that default contract and my last few paid jobs rather did a ‘partnership’ as in shared ownership for a lower hourly with an option to buy outright for shares and/or money at a later date. There are more ways to skin a cat. I am not sure big ( especially software) companies (in other, more litigious countries than mine) would entertain things like this, but if you do not try... For instance, I did a small intranet for a very large company (for my country); because it was not their core business, and as such they did not care if we kept the (c) or sold the source to others as long as they had eternal perpetual rights to do whatever with it as long as they do not sell or use it outside their company. They reasoned that if I have more clients, they might get features and/or bugfixes for free. They did, up to some point and it made me turn my 1 man services company into a product company with staff. Which was fun but a steep learning curve, especially with regards to the money required for the growth of such a company. Their lawyers made up a very fair contract (again this was not their core business so they genuinely knew they would never want to sell this themselves) which had clauses to protect them and us if they exited etc. I had this happen far more often; at the right level, many companies, especially none software companies, will be up for this if they benefit financially or otherwise. Recently (different company; only services again) I had a large car maker suggesting we sell a small LoB app we made for them to their competitors so they would, again, share the financial pain of bugfixes and intellectual gain of new features. Kind of a product/services mix without the pressure of roadmaps, growth etc (all companies pay per hour and get all versions, including forks for others, but not forks by others unless the other parties specifically agree). So kind of contained-closed-open-source way of working, which is far easier for the corp lawyers to wrap their heads around than throwing things into the actual open. Also the quality demands code, community wise, are far less important. Let’s be real; most LoB software is a burning heap of crap; usually first put together parttime by someone of the departmental business and then passed to an external company when growing out of bounds (getting too much uptake internally). This time we could basically do a rewrite, but that is not always the case (remember; my business is being paid for every single hour).