[consulting] Copyright

[George D. DeMet]

In my experience, individual contractors are typically contracted under a "work for hire" arrangement, where anything they develop becomes the property of the person or company who hired them.  That person or company then has the option to redistribute the work under the terms of the GPL or another license.

As a shop, we ask to retain copyright on any module code that we develop, releasing it to our clients under the terms of the GPL.  This allows us to release generalized versions of those modules and patches for existing modules back out to the community, as well as re-use some code for other projects.

Our standard contract includes language that stipulates that any code that might reveal information about proprietary business processes, trade secrets, etc., remains confidential and will not be released to the community or other clients.  

A shared copyright, where both the contractor and the vendor have the ability to redistribute code under whatever license they want, may also be a possibility.

- George

On Apr 24, 2010, at 5:55 AM, George Lee wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> When folks are doing contract work developing modules, is it typical to retain copyright over code or to give copyright to the folks who are contracting out to you? Do folks have legal contract language for both scenarios?
> 
> Peace, community, justice,
> - George
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