[thelist] Sub Contract Work

[Don Makoviney]

All this hypothetical stuff and legalese is nice to talk about, but from my
personal experience I prefer just handing the site over to the client when I
am done.

Why?

Mainly because I like to wash my hands of a project and move to the next
one. This way they won't keep bugging me for upgrades and modifications just
because I maintained some sort of "right" over the work. If I have treated
the customer right they will come back to me with future modifications
anyways. It is much better to have a client "want" to pay you money as
opposed to making them feel "obligated" because of some legal mumbo-jumbo.
It goes back to the old Biblical saying "All things are lawful, but not all
things are advantageous." - which basically means, "Yeah, TECHNICALLY I have
every right to be an arsehole and create a myriad of loopholes in the
contract, but it may end up HURTING me in the long run (or cause a tidal
wave of time-consuming paperwork - which is just about as evil!)."

Of course if it is something completely proprietary, then the rule of thumb
is to clearly define who has the right to the work when it is completed.
Sure, you can draft funky, verbose EULA agreements and crap like that, but
why? Most of the developers I know on this list 1)rarely have time to keep
up with all that legal junk, and 2)are not large enough to be able to hire
an attorney to handle all of that. So make it clear who gets what.

Call me a Jakob Nielsen wanna-be if you like - but I favor simplicity.

HTH,

DON MAKOVINEY

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http://www.makovision.com/

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-----Original Message-----
From: martin.p.burns at uk.pwcglobal.com
[mailto:martin.p.burns at uk.pwcglobal.com]
Sent: Friday, October 19, 2001 2:10 AM
To: thelist at lists.evolt.org
Subject: Re: [thelist] Sub Contract Work



Memo from Martin P Burns of PricewaterhouseCoopers

-------------------- Start of message text --------------------

Good thinking, Michael - everyone goes home (relatively)
happy.

One thing to make clear to them, however, this is a one-off discount
for this specific situation, and your ongoing rate is what it was before.

Other useful learning for next time:
Get the scope in writing (blood is useful!) and signed off before you
boot up your machine, including that over-runs to the scope are the
client's responsibility.

Cheers
Martin



Please respond to thelist at lists.evolt.org

Sent by:  thelist-admin at lists.evolt.org

To:   thelist at lists.evolt.org
Subject:  Re: [thelist] Sub Contract Work

Thanx to all those that responded, I have sort of dealt with the problem.

I agreed to drop my hourly rate instead of reducing the number of hours I
had
worked.  This way there is documentation that the project took more hours
than
expected and I can use this if they raise the same bullsh*t in the future.

They tried to say the stuff up was because I have been dealing with two
different staff members and the lower ranked one didn't inform his boss
that he
had agreed to pay me for my additional time.


--------------------- End of message text --------------------

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