Protecting Your Code While Allowing Source Access?

foo_48120 asks: "My small development shop, myself and four employees, is taking on a fairly large job that will run a substantial part of the clients business. To protect themselves they want the source code to the project. Frankly I don't blame them. We bid aggressively to get them to underwrite our own efforts to build this code, which we plan to resell again and again. That is the basis for our company. I have no problem with them holding the source but need to make it clear that we own the code and that they have a license to use it in their business. They may at their discretion hire others to modify the code, but would still be required to pay their maintenance contract and be prohibited from reselling it or using it to run an additional business. How do you provide open source without escrow, yet protect what we are documenting up front as out intellectual property rights in the ownership of this code?"

Of course third party developers may break things and we would not be responsible for that or for fixing it without further renumeration.

Ideally, if we make them happy then we will do all future upgrades and add on modules as well. I am not worried about that. I do want to know if anyone has experience in the writing of such a licensing agreement? Perhaps they could provide me with a sample copy of their text?

Let's leave aside for now the issue of totally open source vs. closed source. There are times when you want the product to be proprietary as we do, however I want them to feel comfortable using our code so that if a proverbial plane were to fly into our building and wipe us all out then they don't go down the tubes with us."

Well, duh

[Anonymous Coward]

You just need to use the FPL (First Post License) which states that only the first person to see the code gets to claim it.

Sure

[Anonymous Coward]

Just do what you do when you want to eat and have the cake.

Hey.

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that you Bill Gates? HAven't you been asking this a lot lately?

Re:Talk to a lawyer

[sirius_bbr]

Seriously, why are you even bothering to "Ask Slashdot?". This is a legal issue, you'll need legal contracts and agreements, all of that. Talk to a fucking lawyer.

You clearly don't know the difference between what you talking to a lawyer costs, and what talking to the slashdot-crowd costs :)

Re:I would make two version of the tree

[billnapier]

You just need to write an obfuscator then, something that takes the inhouse code and changes variable names and adds bogus modules and subroutines.

I know developers who do this part without really trying that hard...

Re:I have a great idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Parent poster's hanging around here hoping that's the case, so he can score.

~~~

answer

[mr_gerbik]

"How do you provide open source without escrow, yet protect what we are documenting up front as out intellectual property rights in the ownership of this code?"

By hiring yourself a good lawyer.. and not taking law advice from a bunch of pimple-faced /. know-it-alls.

-gerbik

Re:Talk to a lawyer

[IanBevan]

Talk to a fucking lawyer.

...although bear in mind that a lawyer engaged in copulation may not have his/her mind completely on the job.

I always use..

[grub]

GPL: The Guido Public License

Preamble

The licenses for most software are designed to take away your freedom to share and change it. By contrast, the the Scarpelli family's Guido Public License gives you more freedom with the benefit of protection for you, your family and your business. The Guido Public License applies to most of the Scarpelli Family Software Foundation's software and to any other program whose authors commit to using it. (Some other Scarpelli Family Software Foundation software is covered by the Guido Library General Public License instead.) You can apply it to your programs, too.

Accidents, fires and floods happen. The Guido Public License protects you.

We protect our rights with two steps: (1) copyright the software, and (2) offer you this license which gives you legal permission to copy and distribute the software.

Failure to abide by the rules of any of the Guido Public Licenses will mean a visit from Guido Scarpelli himself.

You don't want that.

Re:Give it to them for Free

[blincoln]

Well, for one thing, the model of selling a product doesn't work in the software development industry.

I just heard a thunderclap. I think it was the sound of Bill Gates' bank account entering the atmosphere of your argument. I estimate about five minutes until it re-enacts the scene from the end of The Forge of God when it meets up with Scott McNealy's.

Re:Talk to a lawyer

[L. VeGas]

Well my past experience is this:

Go ahead and give them the code. When they start modifying it, taking it to 3rd parties, and using it at other businesses, stare at the ground and tremble your lower lip. That night, get into an argument with your wife and kick the dog.

Re:My theory

[Anonymous Coward]

How can you call them delusional? These children will be the programmers of tomorrow as they leverage their mad html skillz into the web portals that we will use to view our social security benefits.

Re:Talk to a lawyer

[JordoCrouse]

...although bear in mind that a lawyer engaged in copulation may not have his/her mind completely on the job.

Not a problem - screwing is part of their job description.

Re:Talk to a lawyer

[mike77]

yeah, it's something along the lines of one takes you money and the other takes your dignity...

Re:Talk to a lawyer

[Anonymous Coward]

i have a growth on my left side, under my ribcage. it's discoloured, about a centimeter in diameter, lumps out maybe a third of a cm, and itches every now and then. i'm thinking about taking a knife to it and seeing if i can get rid of it. do you have any suggestions?

Re:Trust

[argel]

The only thing I can think of that might work would be to add extensions to the language you use (like extra keywords) and provide your own closed-source compiler, which is hobbled so it only works on the original system, perhaps with some kind of hardware dongle, or net connection that connects to your server to verify the compiling machine's serial number and some cryptographic key.

This wouldn't prevent it from being hacked, but it might make it difficult enough to make the prospect less likely

And if they did hack it you could have the FBI pay them a visit for violating the DMCA!

Spaghetti code?

[JeanBaptiste]

Thats my job-security. Nonsensical variable names, meaningless functions etc... It would be a nightmare for even a very experienced programmer to decipher some of my source codes, especially for larger programs... So spaghettify the source code then give it to them. In 5 years when they figure it out it probably wont matter much by then, as it would be quicker just to re-write it from scratch.

Re:Talk to a lawyer

[Anonymous Coward]

HELLO.

INAMD, IAMS (student).

But.

Firstly, is it lumpy and protuding out of your body, in the shape of a mole? Is it made mostly of skin? What color is the discoloration? Is there any sort of acne like activity involved or is it mostly dormant?

If it's mostly dormant and feels like a mole (dark coloration of wrinkled skin), concider the following:

Buy a bottle of Burbon or Brandy whichever you feel like. Rum would do too. Make sure it's something good. Setup a camcoder (in case something happens and you need guidence for future growth removals).

Take a very sharp kife (boxcutters) - - best if using medical equipment.

Clean the knife in baking soda throughly, wear latex gloves if you really wanna get into it.

Light a candle, and run the knife over the middle of its flame. Run it for about a min, make sure no candle soot gets on the knife. The knife at this point should be hot. Wait till it cools down, you can test it's coolness by pressing it against the candle and seeing if it slices in.

When it's cool enough. Put your left hand on your head (monkey like). Bite the end of a pillow. And gently, but firmly cut the growth off.

Blood would not come out for a few moments. Quickly dab the wound with the alchole provided. You will feel some pain then. Take a round band aid and firmy apply it on the wound. Hold your hand in position for a min.

Then throw your head back and drink the rest of the brandy....

PUT THE MOVIE ON THE NET
??
profit!!

Re:Talk to a lawyer

[Anonymous Coward]

Make sure you do not have a similar lump on your right hand side. If so, this might be a natural growth known as the nipple. There is no need for removing it.

Re:Give it to them for Free

[rossz]

Well, for one thing, the model of selling a product doesn't work in the software development industry.

Someone should tell Microsoft that Microsoft Office doesn't stand a chance in hell of making any money.

Although he's not likely to find the definition. .

[kfg]

of "Open Source" in a dictionary, making the exercise pointless, he is likely to find many other words in there.

For instance, after modifying the code his firm is indeed likely to renumerate it, i.e., give it a different version number.

For doing this his firm will expect to be *remunerated.* It's from the Latin remuneratus, derived from munis, from which we also derive the English words "munificent" and even "money."

( Munis is a gift, to remunerate is to *re*gift, i.e., effect an exchange)

This note brought to you by the ever hated Slashdot Lexical Patrol ( also known as SLaP), who believes that language is form of code and believes code should be well formed, it's terminology and functions properly called and invoked and even. . .gasp, beautiful.

Our patron saint is William Strunk, Jr., along with his acolyte E.B. White and our Demigods include such figures as Gibbon, Thoreau, Conrad ( who managed in a "foriegn" language no less), Yeats, Voltaire and Kipling ( The OS booted up like thunder!).

Just as Knuth is ( and should be) venerated, so should geeks venerate and study the "code" of these honored figures.

We all write faulty code at times. It's no shame to have to debug and reversion. . .or even have our code corrected by an outside party if that's what it takes to make beautiful code.

In fact, I rather imagine that some of the more ironically inclined are about to take a hearty whack at this missive itself.

KFG

Re:Talk to a lawyer

[Skirwan]

remember, we're a community here.

I think you're confused: this is Slashdot. We eat our wounded.

--
Damn the Emperor!

Re:I would make two version of the tree

[Lumpy]

an confidential inhouse one, and an obfuscated one to give to the company, full of misleading variables names, fake variables, incorrect subroutines, etc. Of course, they both compile correctly.


so we convert it to perl then?

OW.. OW ....OW..OW.OWOWOWOWOWOWOWOW! It's a joke! Stop hitting me!

Use sloppy Code

[bigdadro]

Write sloppy undocumented code that only your guys should understand :)

Re:Signed contract... good lawyer.

[CableModemSniper]

Running with Linux for over 5 years!

I hope thats on an iPAQ or something, a desktop or even a laptop would be kind of heavy to run with, especially for 5 years.

Re:Although he's not likely to find the definition

[fscking_coward_2001]

I would suggest not using the ellipse so often ...

I believe you mean ellipsis. According to my dictionary, ellipse is a geometric figure.

If you're referring to the proliferation of "*" in the post, these are not ellipses. A "*" used as an ellipsis would indicate omission - as in "f*** you!". In the case of this post, the "*" is used for emphasis.

That said, I too find all the "*" annoying. And if anyone can tell me what name is for "*", I'd appreciate it.

Re:Although he's not likely to find the definition

[Trepidity]

...believes code should be well formed, it's terminology and functions properly called and invoked...

I would like to call your attention to the fact that the character sequence "it's" is a macro that is expanded by the preprocessor to the sequence "it is". Thus the sentence fragment above, once preprocessed, reads "...believes code should be well formed, it is terminology and functions properly called and invoked..." This bit of code, as it were, is clearly not well formed.

Re:Talk to a lawyer

[alexo]

Asking Slashdot will likely generate a lot of dumb ideas that won't fly legally, but it also at times generates the occasional 5-Insightful that contains the idea that neither you nor your lawyer would have thought of.

Unfortunately, a large number of "5-Insightful" comments on /. should have been "-5 Dead Wrong".

Voting is a lousy way to arrive at the truth.

Re:Signed contract... good lawyer.

[AndroidCat]

A contract like that that can work -- if they know that you can and will have a lawyer sue them if they violate the agreement. (You don't have to make threats, just let them know that you have the resources to do so, and your lawyer isn't Clippy. "I notice that you're trying to sue someone...")

I am sorry, I cannot share the text of the contrac

[rlalan]

Ideally, if we make them happy then we will do all future upgrades and add on modules as well. I am not worried about that. I do want to know if anyone has experience in the writing of such a licensing agreement? Perhaps they could provide me with a sample copy of their text? I have a contract like that... but the Lawyer told me I could amend the contract for my own business but I could not give it away or use it in another business... I am so sorry I cannot share the text with you.

Re:Talk to a lawyer

[Anonymous Coward]

Well obviously if he posted his question to Slashdot rather than consulting a lawyer, he's looking for technical, not legal (i.e., contract-based) solutions.

Therefore, I recommend:

Provide them with almost all the source code. Somewhere, hidden in the software package, there should be a trojan horse that will sit there and wait for further instructions. When they fuck with you, activate the trojan horse, which causes all their backups to silently fail for two weeks, then erases all their hard drives and prints "Hahahhahhahahahha 3Y3 0WNZ0RZ J00 f@g0rz!!!!loOlolololoolololollol!!!!!" 1,000,000 times on each printer.

Re:Talk to a lawyer

[kryonD]

If your nipples are below your ribcage, you have two possible solutions:

#1) You're a girl and need to investigate this amazing invention called a bra.

#2) You're a guy and should shoot yourself before you infect the rest of the gener pool.

As far as the software goes. Give it away and let them spread it around. After it get's sufficiently popular, file a patent on the idea and sue everyone using it. That seems to be the standard business model these days.