HW15: Chapter 15

15.10  Typically if a software contractor provides some custom code to a business it’s safe to assume the business doesn’t have the internal resources to develop the code on its own or is much too busy with other profitable aspects of their business in which case owning the source code might not be as useful as negotiating service level agreements, trainings, and/or workshops that show the customer how to configure the system to meet its needs, for example.  However, there shouldn’t be much of this from a developed system from a software contractor as we can assume much of the requirements are custom built.  I would say the contractor has a right to its core components and even the configurable application components to its software product line.  It all depends on the contract but typically the business only cares about the end product and way to build out the more popular components in the future with the contractor.

I would think the contractor has a right to its own developed code unless it was developed under the premise that they may never be able to reuse any of the components as stated by the contract.  But I don’t think many software companies would be wise to agree to those terms if they are trying to build out their own similar product line.

A payment mechanism could be based on the number of licenses the company would need based on its users, administrators and other groups of people with different types of access to different parts of the system, like say the back end database or people able to access the API of the system.

In some cases a business may become very tied with one software suite and once realizing their advantage the company providing the software may increase its licensing costs or consulting fees for the most basic changes.  I’ve seen companies want to charge tens of thousands to add one column to their database and be very matter of fact about it.  In this case its unethical to serve your customer so poorly knowing that for them to leave and go with another company would cost them much more than to pay inflated fees for all matters of service.