[consulting] copyright policies

[Bill Fitzgerald]

Hello, Robert,

We have a developer's agreement that we have clients sign as part of the 
process of starting a job. In that, we clearly identify who gets what.

A quick breakdown (and as we are a US company, this is based on US law 
-- our lawyers are familiar with Open Source law, and actually do some 
work with the OSL) -- Our goal was to ensure that the code we wrote 
would always be available to us to reuse, and would always be 
released/covered under the GPL:

Client's pre-existing IP remains their property.
Our pre-existing IP remains our property.
Project IP (ie, any solutions derived as a direct result of the work) 
belong to the client.
Any code that executes the Project IP belongs to the client, as it is 
work for hire.
Any code we develop for a client, while remaining the property of the 
client, is licensed back to us for re-use in perpetuity. Our contract 
also has a non-compete clause, so that we can't set up (or become) 
competitors to our clients. It seems obvious, but some clients are 
actually worried about that :)
Any code we develop is also licensed under the GPL, and we usually 
negotiate the mechanics of the release with the client.

When our lawyers first generated this, it seemed overly elaborate to me, 
but it gets the job done, as we are never in a situation where we can't 
access our own work.

WRT "Are you having similar conflicts with the businesses hiring you as 
developers and their copyright policies?" -- we have had situations in 
the past where people have balked at developing GPL code. For us, it was 
a clear flag that the client might not be the best fit for us, and I 
communicated that very clearly to the client.

Good luck -- it's a sticky issue for some people, particularly those who 
are unfamiliar with the benefits of working in an Open Source ecosystem.

Cheers,

Bill

Robert Garrigós Castro wrote:
> I'm having a bit of an issue with a new employer on the copyright of 
> the code I will write for them and I wonder what copyright policies 
> other freelance drupal developers have.
>
> I tend to ask to keep authorship of the code and have my name into the 
> code as the author, although I yield all other rights to the employer. 
> Is this a normal procedure for anybody else? Are you having similar 
> conflicts with the businesses hiring you as developers and their 
> copyright policies?
>
> -- 
>
> Robert Garrigós
> -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
> Pàgina professional / /Professional web page/
> http://garrigos.cat
>
> drupal punt cat: Grup d'Usuaris de Drupal en Català
> http://drupal.cat <http://www.drupal.cat>
> -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
>
> P * Si no és necessari, no imprimeixis aquest correu.*
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> consulting mailing list
> consulting at drupal.org
> http://lists.drupal.org/mailman/listinfo/consulting
>   


-- 
Bill Fitzgerald
http://www.funnymonkey.com
Tools for Teachers
503.897.7160