Licensing and Ownership

A few months ago I was approached to develop the website for racealerts.com, including the system that sends automated SMS to our clients. Our initial agreement was I have full ownership of the code, and the person paying me to develop it has the rights to use it and do with it as he sees fit.

The site is nearly done, and we are just discussing final payment issues. As I own the code, I figure I have two options:

1. Look for other companies in this field and sell it to them (not sounding too good because the code wasn't designed to be fully portable, but it can be done)
2. Sell him the full ownership of the code.

For the ownership, I'm only thinking around $300AUD, since I would probably only get around $500 for selling the system to another party, and it saves a lot of work.

Is selling ownership of the code a good idea? What could be some drawbacks to this? This is my first time doing a site like this, so any help would be great!

Nerdo
Saturday, May 8, 2004

I know nothing about that industry, so my questions aren't mean-spirited.

1. Is there a demand for this stuff? I mean demand that isn't already being filled by another company. Or, demand that isn't being filled by internal developers.

2. Are you capable of selling? Do you cringe in fear at the thought of picking up the phone to call a company and trying to pitch them on your product?

If either answer is "no" then I'd suggest taking your money and run. On the other hand, if there really is a market and you've got the cajones to pursue it then by all means go do that!

Whatever
Saturday, May 8, 2004

Since you sorted out ownership up front, you should keep the rights. Give them a permanent licence to use it, but ensure they don't let other consultants walk away with the code. Make that clear.

You can certainly get more business doing that sort of work.

Saturday, May 8, 2004

You are selling several months work for $300AUD? Please explain more about this.

Dennis Atkins
Sunday, May 9, 2004

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