Hi Jochen, The way I read your problem would be that yes you do need to keep the code on your staging server unless
1) The client has explicitly asked for maintenance and has agreed to fund the development. 2) You're deploying the changes as a part of routine maintenance as agreed with the client What this boils down to is your agreement with your client. Say you've been contracted to developed a site for a client. You've recommended to base said site on $CMS_FRAMEWORK which is licensed under OSS license and they've agreed (and even let you open source the plugins you've developed as a part of the project). Project delivered on time and under budget (rare I know) and client is happy (frequent occurrence if you know what you're doing). Further down the line there is a serious bug found in your $CMS_FRAMEWORK and client's site should be upgraded. There are couple of options now: 1) Explain to the client that there's been a patch for the $SERIOS_ISSUE, explain the risks/reasons for the patch and let the client make the decision. If they agree proceed with the work if not let it be. 2) Patch the code as part of agreed maintenance (look up MS patch Tuesday) 3) Patch the code and let the client know that you've done some free maintenance to score some brownie points (marketing types call this a loss leader). *Make sure you don't disrupt their operation* Did I mention that it's comes down to the agreement with the client? IANAL, YMMW etc... Dali PS if it's not in writing it's not agreed From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Jochen Daum Sent: Monday, 27 July 2009 10:48 a.m. To: PHPUG Subject: [phpug] [OT] legal: retain ownership of code until paid and open source licence Hi all, I'm looking for experiences with the following problem: we're distributing most of our code under open source licences to clients and I wonder if anyone has had experiences with the following scenario: - Project get developed and delivered under open source licence to client on clients server - Later, a round of maintenance is developed and rolled out to the clients staging server. - Clients disputes nature of maintenance request and withholds payment Now, normally we have a clause in our contract that we withhold the licence of source code until it is paid. I found a similar clause in Egressive's contract here: http://www.phpug.org.nz/index.php/Business_Terms_and_Conditions and our own contract has pretty much an identical clause: "3.1 The Supplier, subject to payment in full of all owing, grants the Purchaser a non-exclusive licence in respect of all pre-existing material of the Supplier, which comprises the Agreement Type upon completion of The Project , ..." But after completion of the maintenance we would have distributed open source code already? Do I need to keep code on my own staging server at all times to get around this? Kind Regards, Jochen Daum Chief Automation Officer Automatem Ltd Phone: 09 630 3425 Mobile: 021 567 853 Email: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Skype: jochendaum Website: www.automatem.co.nz<http://www.automatem.co.nz> http://twitter.com/automatem http://www.xing.com/go/invite/3425509.181107 --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ NZ PHP Users Group: http://groups.google.com/group/nzphpug To post, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe, send email to [email protected] -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
