[consulting] copyright policies

[DragonWize]

Hi PDM,

I see your point and agree that that situation is possible in theory.
In practice though I think that situation is much harder to define.

> sure, but the design, the process and the creative ideas the developer did not have

That only applies to the larger idea. Often for a larger idea to
become reality it takes lower level creative ideas to make it happen.

> i can hire any developer to do the job, the developer could not hire any client to get the
> innovative functionality (that then they want to resell as their own work? whoa)
>
> I am talking about functions that were not available in commercial nor open source products before I required them, asked the devs to >code them (the creative process is in the design, implementing is a subset of design)

That is assuming that your idea is so simple that anyone could do it
and that every developer that did it would do it the same way. I think
that while possible that is a lot of assumptions to make come true. If
you ask a developer to build a shopping cart system, even though there
are a million of them out there, that doesn't mean that developer put
no creative work into it and did not make advancements in speed,
usablity, etc because of his skill in coding for the web. The same
goes true for an original idea. The developer could make no advances,
they could make major advances, or any where inbetween. Just as it is
hard to tell if a developer is not using the code it is also tell,
especially for someone who had to hire someone, what advances if any
there were it.

> I think who would be profiting from someone else's work here is the developer!
> (reselling my work?)

As a developer I would think the same thing, reselling my work?

My point is that *I believe* IP belongs to ideas and final products
and not code that is used to build them.

Ex. If Henry Ford came to me asked me to build a factory to build his
cars quickly. Then I used my skill to build an assembly line. Then the
Wright Brothers came to be and asked for me to build a factory for
their planes. I would build an assembly line.

I don't see any issue here because the tool was created by me and the
overall product is different. If someone hires me to build a  new kind
of social networking site that has never been done before and I create
a super fast data access library while building that site, that tool
is mine and is my creative work. I would not re-create the social
networking idea that was the final product but I would re-use my code
on the next pizza site I built.

Alan