Selling Code
Community Forums/General Help/Selling Code
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| Hi everyone, I'm on the verge of selling my first coded work, a web app comprised of multiple PHP scripts. I've sold websites before that use HTML/CSS, but since that code is all public, I just charge for the labor of making it. This is more like selling the source though. My question is what must be done to ensure that my work is protected. How does code licensure work, and what are my options when choosing a license? I will be doing some research on my own, but thought having the insight of people experienced with this would also be beneficial. Thanks, |
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| Ioncube is one option ( http://www.ioncube.com/ ). |
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| If you created it from scratch, you can pretty much decide on whatever terms and conditions you want... the biggest things to consider when deciding on what terms/conditions: 1) Is it an exclusive license or not? e.g. are you allowed to re-use / sell the same template or scripts to other customers, or do they get the exclusive rights? 2) Do you transfer full ownership, or do you retain the copyright? This comes into play for example when the buyer wishes to resell the site/scripts to other companies, or generalize it into a generic template for many other entities to use Obviously, exclusive rights are normally more expensive than shared rights... Although it's probably a bit late in the game to start wondering it about all of this right now, and now when you were starting the work. Some of the terms and conditions could very well be deal-breakers with the customer, after all, and (non)exclusiveness can have a big impact on the actual price one would charge. |
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| Well so far the plan is to sell the code to others once I finish it for them. They are aware of this and we've agreed on a price already. I wish to retain the copyright to prevent it from being resold and redistributed. So do I have to write a license myself? I doubt I have the legal expertise to do so. |
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