[consulting] Proper Collections Procedure

[Eric Goldhagen]

At 8:20 AM -0700 8/17/06, Henri Poole wrote:
>On Thu, 2006-08-17 at 09:10 -0600, Laura Scott wrote:
>>  > Be prepared to deliver incomplete, intermediate code if they want 
>>  > it - if they're paying every two weeks, they own the stuff you've 
>>  > done for what they've paid.
>>
>>  This would apply only in work-for-hire situations. In the US, unless 
>>  the contract explicitly says it's work-for-hire, or you're an 
>>  employee of the company, then the contract itself is where what is 
>>  owed to whom upon termination is all specified. A contractor owns all 
>>  legal and moral rights to her work until and unless she assigns 
>>  rights or licensing to the client, but for a work-for-hire contractor 
>>  or employee, legal and moral rights to his work are owned by his 
>>  employer or contractor. (IANAL, so please don't count on this as 
>>  legal advice.)
>
>It is more complicated. Most of the code is available only under the GPL
>or AGPL license. These licenses require that you stick to their license
>for derivatives.
>
>At CivicActions, we leave all copyright ownership with our contractors,
>and we get a license for the work (this has to be done with a contract,
>but the contract can be simple). We then use the license to give our
>clients rights to use the work. We put this into the proposals as
>standard practice.

Same with openflows. We have refused a number of 
times to sign contracts that define anything as 
"work for hire." It is our opinion that the legal 
reality of a work-for-hire agreement is in itself 
a violation of the GPL. That applies to our 
relationship with our clients as well as 
contractors.

The only way we will take a project is if the 
client agrees that copyright is assigned to those 
that created the code and those that paid for it 
jointly, and all code is released under the GPL 
(this makes the coder, openflows, and the end 
client join copyright holders, and tends to 
satisfy corporate lawyers, F/OSS advocates and 
our desire to ensure that our efforts stay in the 
public domain).

As well, we try to insist on using plain language 
contracts, not documents written in lawyer-speak. 
This makes it much easier to negotiate problems 
as they arise without having to call in lawyers.

--Eric
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