Ask Slashdot: How To Share a SharePoint Site? 151
New submitter grzzld writes "I am a systems analyst for a County in New York. Last year I made a SharePoint site that manages grants and it was well received. So much so that it won a NACo award. Since then, there have been several requests from other municipalities from around the country who would like to get this SharePoint site. The county is trying to figure out how to protect ourselves from people making money from it and having people hold us liable if it they use it and something goes awry. I am afraid that ultimately nothing will be done and the site will not be shared since at the end of the day it is much easier to not do anything and just say no. I proposed that we license it under an Open Source agreement but I am not versed enough in the differences between all of them. It is also unclear to me if I could do this since the nature of the 'program' is a SharePoint site. It seemed like CodePlex would be a good place to put this since it is Microsoft centric and it an open source initiative. I just want to contribute my work to others who may find it useful. The county just wants to make sure they can't be held liable and have somebody turn my work around and make a buck. How can I release this to the world and make sure the county's concerns are addressed?"
Warranty disclaimer's the important thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Do nothing. (Score:2, Insightful)
CYA and don't share anything. If they want it badly enough, they can contract you to build something similar.
Making money (Score:4, Insightful)
Why do you care if others make money off it? It's government developed so that means it was funded by taxpayer money.
All taxpayers should have access to it, even if they want to make money from it. It should automatically be public domain.
You can still CYA by a simple BSD style license.
Re:quick how-to (Score:3, Insightful)
I loath Microsoft and closed-source software, and "walk the walk" (I use a total of 4 proprietary programs), but this comment is beyond worthless. The poster says that the site works great, and wants to share it with other groups. You are basically saying "no it doesn't." And there is no analysis as to why that might be the case. You might as well have just screamed nonsenically in anger.
Re:Can you say "lawyer"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Talk to a lawyer! (Score:4, Insightful)
If the county wants to share but is concerned about liability, THEY SHOULD TALK TO THEIR ON-STAFF/ IN-HOUSE/ ON-RETAINER legal counsel!
They have them, I guarantee it. Use them. The last they want is a tech guy (who has already admitted he doesn't know the implications of the various licenses) fumbling around to figure this out.
If they really really don't want to talk to their own legal counsel, then just prepare an instruction list that other municipalities could follow and publish that instead of trying to distribute the whole kit-and-kaboodle.
Re:quick how-to (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft does not make computers, or make them cheaper. That trend was started by hardware manufacturers competing with IBM with clean room implementations of the bios, and continued with netbooks etc. Nice rewrite of history.
Re:Can you say "lawyer"? (Score:2, Insightful)
Every year a company comes drops down a freedom of information act for a particular piece of software in our state. They take it and go out and make money with it. Every year I argue that we should just put it out on the Internet so we can save the freedom of information act request time and money. Whats wrong with giving back the tax dollars in research to help put someone (and their employees) to work?