Bradley, Thank you for the feedback. I think I mistakenly stated "work for hire" as a general contractual relationship. My intent was a general relationship with a vendor under a contract, or by the hour, etc. Not what you allude to as the correct meaning (which I am unclear of).
Others? Stan On Mon, Apr 13, 2009 at 4:30 PM, Bradley Holt <[email protected]>wrote: > Stan, > > Interesting questions! I'll tell you what our marketing, design, and > development studio (Found Line) does. I have some ideas on how our > approach compares and contrasts with what others in the industry do, > but I'd rather not make too many assumptions about other companies so > I'll stick to talking about what we do. > > First, we *never* do work for hire. This is, in my opinion, a really > bad idea for most creative firms. There are many problems with work > for hire including putting your intellectual property at risk (for you > and your clients!). Also, the laws on work for hire are strange when > it comes to software - I'm not even sure if it's possible for software > to be done as a work for hire (other than as an employee, of course). > > For all non-software work (design, illustration, copy, etc.) we do a > *full* copyright transfer to the client, upon full payment, of the > delivered work. The client typically does not get copyright > transferred on rounds leading up to the final deliverable. We do *not* > charge any licensing or royalty fees. The client owns the work > (assuming they paid their invoice) and can use it however they would > like. > > For software, we don't do a full copyright transfer as this would > impractical. With software it makes sense to be able to reuse code, > and if we transferred copyright we would never be able to do this. > Instead, we license software to our clients using the free/open source > New BSD License. This gives us full protection - we still hold the > copyright and own the software. It also gives our clients total > freedom - they can use the software however they want, modify the > source code, release modified (or unmodified) versions, even integrate > it with proprietary software if they want. We build all of our web > applications now on Zend Framework which also uses the New BSD License > so this helps keep licensing simple and consistent for our clients. > > Thanks, > Bradley > > > On Mon, Apr 13, 2009 at 3:48 PM, Stanley Brinkerhoff > <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hey All, > > > > As many of us do -- I have a few groups that I do work with that > > occasionally want me to help them with some work on their website. One > such > > group works with an out of state Vendor that has locked them in pretty > > tight, developing everything "in their cms" that is proprietary and > closed > > source. From my past experience as a consultant doing web-work, as well > as > > taking over contracts of over consultants (and losing a few), as well as > my > > limited experience with media organizations in Vermont -- what is the > > prevalence towards the attitude towards ownership of the work-for-hire of > > both design and application development? > > > > Is it standard for closed-source inhouse-developed CMS vendors to say > "you > > cant access any code we've developed"? > > Is it standard for vendors to say "we made it we own it" in terms of > > content, assets (flash, pdf, etc), and design? > > Is it standard for full-custom code (in PHP, Python, etc) to be fully > > licensed to the customer and changes to the source allowed without > > distribution rights? > > > > My belief was that most companies provided a royalty free, perpetual, and > > source license to their cms products. Specifically this belief was > enforced > > by attending the Montpelier Vermont website selection committee in which > the > > three vendors who were finalists all said their products were the > property > > (whenever possible) of the client. > > > > The exception to this (taht seems ok) would be someone selling a sourced > > based framework/toolkit in which a site is deevloped on (ie, a website > > developed on an ASP.NET platform with Microsoft's toolkit), or otherwise > > commercially available and supported system that is documented and is > > decoupled from the work-for-hire. > > > > Thoughts? Experiences? I know we have a few developers on this list > > (*cough*) who can contact me off list as well if they prefer. > > > > Stan > > > > > > -- > http://bradley-holt.blogspot.com/ >
