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Changing a script to resell

by Kevin Birch
5 replies
Hi Guys

If I sell a script that I have [had] developed, and someone makes changes to it, can that person legally resell the script as their own?

Thanks .. . .in anticipation

Kevin
#changing #resell #script
  • Profile picture of the author Neil Morgan
    That depends on the agreement between your developer and you, and the agreement between your customer and you.

    It would also depend on the licensing agreement on any 3rd party code that your developer used in the project.

    Cheers,

    Neil
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  • Profile picture of the author rwil02
    It depends.
    If your license agreement prohibits them from reverse engineering, modifying or reselling it, etc, then no.

    If you fail to prohibit those things, then it gets into a messy and grey area.

    You can't rely on copyright/IP law as that varies from place to place. Contract law is much more reliable as the agreement forms the primary basis for resolving disputes.
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    Roger Willcocks
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  • Profile picture of the author tim_buchalka
    Originally Posted by kevinb View Post

    Hi Guys

    If I sell a script that I have [had] developed, and someone makes changes to it, can that person legally resell the script as their own?

    Thanks .. . .in anticipation

    Kevin
    Kevin, legally probably not, although that depends on your agreement at the time they purchase from you, as well as your agreement with the developer.

    Why not remove the risk and use a tool like Ioncube PHP Encoder? from ioncube.com

    That way they can run it fine on their server, but can't make modifications to it because it's protected.

    Not the cheapest solution, but fairly safe (as far as these types of tools go).

    ioncube is fairly well supported on web hosts these days as well.

    Cheers
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    • Profile picture of the author zerofill
      With PHP that area is tough...there used to be some issues where people would change like 30-40% of a script and call it their own and win in court.

      But if you encode the script with something...like others have mentioned...then you can include the "No Reverse Engineering Clause"

      Although I haven't followed or read an court cases with anything pertaining to a language like PHP in a few years...and the legal system was much more ignorant to legal issues pertaining to computer software back then...

      So I am sure some things have changed...or I hope they have lol.
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      • Profile picture of the author ryanstreet
        Was your script written as OPEN SOURCE, GPL, GNU, or other open source agreements? If so, you cannot do anything about it. Otherwise, if you can prove that your script was your own and it is still majorly used as what you intended it to be, (ex: you wrote a RSS reader, and he made it a 'blog only' rss reader), you can get him for copyright infringement, if nothing else. Otherwise, check your contract agreement. If you don't have a contract agreement, go with copyright. If you can't pursue that, let this be a lesson in solid contract writing.

        Sorry this may not be exactly what you were looking for in an answer, but I don't like to beat around the bush. I hope this helps.
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        Ryan Street
        PHP Developer Specializing in WordPress and Magento
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