Re: Company concered with "One-man-band".

> I have written an application for a niche market inwhich I had originally
> planned to market myself. Now, a company wants to buy exclusive rights
> to the program, but they have concerns about maintaining the code in the
> future because I am a "one-man-band". I developed the program on my
> own, and at this time, I am the only one with working knowledge of how
> the program works. The company has little to no software experience,
> and is nervous about what they would do if I was killed, or in some other
> way, left the project.
>
> I am looking for suggestions as to how I can alleviate their concerns, and
> ideas for a risk management strategy to help protect their investment in
> me and my program. I don't plan on getting hit by a bus, but
unfortunately
> it is a possibility.

I think it's a reasonable concern on their part.

Some solutions:

(i) give them a licence to the code, that does not exclude your rights to
reuse it as appropriate (ie to reuse methods, components, etc in other
projects), and ship them a copy of the code. eg set up a source control
server on their site and check out the project from there.

(ii) tell them you are happy to grow your company, if they pay for you
employing more developers (and calculate rates for hiring people, buying
them hardware and software, etc).

(iii) put the source code in 'escrow' ie in a legal 'locked box' so they can
access it under certain specified legal conditions.

etc.

If I were the company, and I was buying an exclusive licence, I'd want some
protection of this sort. Probably I'd try to negotiate for access to the
code with advice from an independent consultant that it was well written and
maintainable. If I had this, I'd probably settle for the code in escrow,
otherwise I'd insist on actually having the code available so I could get it
reviewed. I'd sort this out before buying it, or mentioning/settling a
price.

HTH

Lauchlan M


.