[thelist] Copyright ownership under LGPL

Sarah Sweeney mr.sanders at designshift.com
Tue Jun 15 10:12:55 CDT 2004


David Bindel wrote:
> My potential client will not accept anything less than full legal
> ownership/copyright in order to:
> 
> 1) avoid "copyright problems"
> 2) avoid "subsidizing" the development of future websites in which I
>    might reuse code that I used in his website
> 3) ensure that his website is "one of a kind" (as far as internal PHP 
>    code goes)
> 
> *snip*
> 
> Is this client worth keeping?

Sounds to me like your client is either grossly misinformed or is trying 
to rip you off by (a) getting the copyright to the software for much 
less than it's worth, and possibly (b) selling the software to someone 
else. Otherwise, why bother making such a big deal over a family website?

You might try educating him somewhat on copyright/licensing/open source 
issues, if you think it will help. And you could point out to him that 
no code is ever totally "one of a kind", especially given best practices 
that you would always use in your code, etc. The uniqueness of his site 
should come from it's design, presentation, and content.

Otherwise, I'd say it's probably not worth it.

-- 
Sarah Sweeney
Web Developer & Programmer
Portfolio :: http://sarah.designshift.com
Blog, etc :: http://hardedge.ca


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