[consulting] copyright policies

[Bèr Kessels]

Hello,

Op donderdag 24 januari 2008, schreef Boris Mann:
> Or rather, after Client A, you submit it to Drupal.org with  
> sponsorship from Client A.
>
> Client B wants extra functionality. You add it, and Client A gets it  
> "for free".

In addition: you become more valuable for Client B, since you are the one with 
intimate knowlegde of the (open) system. 

I often deliver turnkey sites, where a client is not at all interested in 
the "nuts and bolds that keep it humming". A client just wants a podcast, and 
cannot be bothered by stuff like 'I developed an XSPF output layer on views". 

For these cases, and the other usual cases where custom code is made, I 
normally offer a discount: code that can be GPLed (i.e.. code that I can 
re-use without hassle, or the chance of being sued for copyright issues) 
gives the client a discount of X% on all the hours required to build that. 

IT has one disadvantage: I am sponsoring Drupal (the community) from my own 
pocket, instead of letting the client sponsor it.
It has two advantages: People just looove discount. Think about that 
refridgerator that the salesman planned to sell for €1200. He will start 
offering the fridge for 1600, and when you walk out the door with that fridge 
for 1400, you have the idea you got 200 discount, and you aer happy. 
A client can easily be pursuaded this way to waver off copyrights and IP. 
After all: it gives them a financial benefit, as well as the more fuzzy 
benefits, such as communiyt-kudos and free-maintainance.

Bèr

As a PS: often the free-maintainance thing is brought up as positive about 
releasing as GPL. In Drupal this is more often not true at all: it needs 
good, skilled and visionay maintainers to keep up your standards. Chances are 
just as big that something gets 'maintained untill crap' where features you 
never need, implemented in ugly ways make your contrib worthless for you. And 
maintaining =! free!

-- 
 Drupal, Ruby on Rails and Joomla! development http://webschuur.com
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