Contract coding conundrum | Hacker News Reader

Contract coding conundrum

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Hi guys,

I am getting into contract programing and I have a problem. Supposing I quoted a price (via email) and the guy accepts, then I realise the work is harder than I thought and the code could be licenced.

Is it legal to say "Sorry I've changed my mind, I'm coding this on my own now but I'll give you a free copy when it's ready."

If not, is it legal to say "Sorry something has come up and I don't want to work with you any more" but then code it for myself?

I have signed no contracts, spoken on the phone once and exchanged a few emails. I've barely started the code and we first emailed about a week ago.

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Good forum on the topic: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/900803/cost-and-ownership...

I believe in CA the following holds true (from a comment in the above thread) but am not a lawyer and DO NOT KNOW FOR SURE: "The normal situation with freelance programming is that the client will own the source code. That being said--depending on jurisdiction and many other factors--if it's not specified in any contract it will often default to the freelance programmer."

You can't call it a "contract programming" situation if there is no contract. What you are admitting to is quoting a price in haste (to get the job?) and getting it wrong. I would never provide a quote until the client has provided a specification. If they can't produce a spec, then I write one for them on a T&M basis and suggest that the client invites others as well to quote on doing the job. The spec then becomes part of the contract.

What the client does with your program once completed should be of no concern to you. You wrote it for them and it's theirs to use or not use as they please. As ninjaa points out, you may or may not have intellectual property rights to the program depending on the jurisdiction in which the agreement was reached.

If you accept no money and reneg, then your client doesn't have much to grouse about except for the wasted time. It's obvious that your client wasn't being professional either since they didn't demand a written contract. You could probably both put this episode behind you and chalk it up to experience.

It all depends on how the email was worded. If the email said "How much will x website/photoshop killer cost?" and the guy said, "I would say about $xxx" then there is no contract. But if the emails read more like, "How much would you charge for x." and he replies, "oh I would do it for $xxx." and the client says, "OK." This would result in a contract in CA and probably in others. Even without that second exchange of emails a verbal contract is still a contract so you need to be careful of what you agree to do.

Break the project into milestones and give a tentative price for the first two or so milestones.

You can quickly figure out who is a dick and who is not wrt to contract employers based on how much they talk about the project, how involved they are and how bad they want it. There are people out there who fancy themselves software "owners" and are just in it for the sake of saying "my programmer .." in polite conversations. Avoid people with Big Ideas and work with people who want a problem solved.

Also beware of wannabe software vendors and resellers; people who will pay you to write software they intend to resell, and not use directly. Those tend to over think it and they're swayed by the slightest shift in trends; a blog post they read somewhere can bring the project to a halt. It's good to be paid, but it's even better to know your work is being used somewhere by someone, instead of it sitting in someone's My Documents folder.

I see a lot of good advice here, but what sticks out and hasn't been addressed is that the OP is essentially asking, "Can I steal this client's idea?"

If you chose to do this OP, I hope it is the best idea ever -- because if it's not, you've probably sunk your career as a contract programmer, so I hope you have a plan B in the wings.

I think he's asking if it's OK to steal the guy's idea and do it on his own, because he wants to license it himself.

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