[thelist] Copyright ownership under LGPL

Maximillian Schwanekamp anaxamaxan at neptunewebworks.com
Tue Jun 15 10:48:27 CDT 2004


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However, the new terms he has presented to me would prevent me from
using my LGPL'ed software in the creation of his website (as I had
originally planned), and honestly, I do not feel like rewriting
something from scratch and not being able to reuse it again because I
sold the copyright for a less than fair amount.

If I was dealing with a well-funded business, I'd have no regrets
selling the copyright for a swell sum, but this is a family website with
a not-so-huge budget.

Is this client worth keeping?
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Not unless he is willing to pay *full* development costs.  Judah's hammer
analogy is apt.  Paying for a tool is one thing.  Paying for the design,
testing, and implementation of a whole new tool that accomplishes the same
outward goal is quite another.  It sounds like your potential client is
not able to pony up that kind of money, but wants the benefit (copyright
ownership)
of having done so.  Any client who demands more than they're willing to pay
for
is not a good client to keep IMHO.

Not to mention the legal bugaboos that it opens yourself up to when you
accidentally reuse (from habit or standardized practice) a piece of code
that appears in the application you sold the copyright to - the SCO analogy
wasn't so far off the mark.  Unlikely, but then this whole thread is about
legal possibilities, not what normally happens among consenting sane adults.

Great discussion thread though, ethical slips and ad hominem attacks
notwithstanding... :)

Maximillian Von Schwanekamp
Dynamic Websites and E-Commerce
www.NeptuneWebworks.com
voice: 541-302-1438
fax: 208-730-6504




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