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?"
Why can't anyone make a buck? (Score:5, Interesting)
Public Domain (Score:3, Interesting)
FYI, if I remember right all works by a public employee while employed are to be in the public domain. This is at least true for federal workers.
NACo Award (Score:2, Interesting)
No offense, but I won a NACo award as well...in the 90s. Seems cool, but I am aware that ANY submitted project 'wins'.
I am not so certain I'd be using this award as a statement of how awesome the work is.
* I am not saying the work is not awesome, just that this is not a good measurement.
Re:Warranty disclaimer's the important thing (Score:4, Interesting)
I have a similar issue working in publicly funded healthcare. Some things I've created (I own the IP but don't really care that much one way or another) my hospital has difficulties commercializing for several reasons but biggest being liablity. Even if our license says we aren't responsible if another hospital has their operations impacted we will be expected to help out since it is all the governments money. Does the hospital I work for want to get $500 and then be liable for God knows how much of my time spent debugging crap if things goes wrong? Millions of dollars in internal projects get wasted each year because of fear of liability so each hospital ends up doing the same thing on their own and not willing to share. Silly.