Software Engineering Stack Exchange
Software Engineering Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [contract]

Contract refers to a legal agreement by software vendor and client/company to sell or provide IT services, including software development and support.

52 questions
117
votes
20 answers

Project Manager that wants to lock in time estimate with a signed contract

At a previous employment, a project manager (PM) wasn't satisfied with the delivery time of the code on a project I was on. I was told by my project lead that that the PM was considering having me sign a contract to lock-in my time estimates I gave…
spong
  • 9,361
  • 6
  • 44
  • 58
99
votes
8 answers

Client wants source code, but it contains a lot of shared code I reuse with other projects

I have a client who would like me to deliver the source code with a developed application binary. They originally said nothing about source code, but they recently said they need it. The contract is not finalized. They agreed to the work, did not…
robby987
  • 1,079
  • 1
  • 7
  • 4
49
votes
10 answers

Legal issues with an NDA that I do not want to sign

I've been given a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) to sign by my current employer that I do not want to sign. It is incredibly open ended and I feel that it should have been a condition of my initial employment agreement, which I signed three weeks…
Dylon
  • 638
  • 1
  • 6
  • 9
27
votes
2 answers

Differences between Design by Contract and Defensive Programming

Could Designing by Contract (DbC) be a way to program defensively? Is one way of programming better in some cases than the other?
Gabriel Fair
  • 373
  • 1
  • 3
  • 8
20
votes
4 answers

What to look out for in employment contracts

I thought of this today after a co-worker looked through the contract they had signed several years ago and was quite alarmed. What should one look out for before signing a contract, as most employers will get you to sign one. Please post ideas…
Brandon
  • 5,873
  • 6
  • 37
  • 59
15
votes
2 answers

Contract Programming - Deposit % and Payment Methods? Any advice is appreciated

I'm pretty new to doing contract work and finally landed a decent paying project. The guy actually offered to put down a deposit and I'm just wondering what percentage I should consider asking for. I was thinking around 25% since its not a terribly…
programmx10
  • 2,097
  • 13
  • 27
14
votes
3 answers

How to deal with "software end-of-life" situations?

When a vendor declares that they no longer intend to provide any support or services to a piece of software (and stated the intent to exit the business - offering no upgrade paths), what kind of recourse is available to the customer? Please consider…
rwong
  • 16,695
  • 3
  • 33
  • 81
13
votes
11 answers

Do I own copyright of program I made in own time?

I created a software package that aids electrical engineers with common calculations used on site (substations to be specific). I created the package in my own time, without being asked and without guidance. The package is now widely used within my…
Dave Mess
  • 147
  • 1
  • 8
12
votes
3 answers

Open Source Friendly IP Contracts for Freelancers

I am about to enter the world of consulting for the first time and am having to write my first contract. One problem I have is regarding open source work and intellectual property. I love working on open source projects, whether it's an existing…
toby
  • 333
  • 1
  • 8
11
votes
8 answers

How do you decide if you should take a project?

I am a fairly new developer. Professionally I have programed in C# for two years as an intern and 6 months as a junior developer. A friend of my family needs help with a project that is written in VB.net. I have never used VB.net, so I am a…
J Lundberg
  • 263
  • 1
  • 8
11
votes
2 answers

How exactly do exclusive code rights work?

I was asked by a client to submit a proposal for a web-app he wants to built. This client is a startup with a relatively good traction so far (as it seems). I have been asked to draft up a contract that prevents me from writing any of the code I…
nicholaswmin
  • 1,869
  • 2
  • 18
  • 36
11
votes
3 answers

Starting consulting while employed - conflict of interest

First of all I am not after legal advice. This is a bit TL;DR but I have a summary at the bottom, I'm explaining it all so people can offer insightful advise. Situation I need to explain my present situation to explain why I've decided to go the…
Sam
  • 6,152
  • 2
  • 20
  • 34
10
votes
3 answers

Minimum billable time unit - industry standard for contract programming?

We're a client that recently hired a contract programming company for some fairly focused work (essentially writing 'scripts' to extend the functionality of a third-party enterprise application). We're trying to evaluate their performance on and the…
ErikE
  • 1,151
  • 1
  • 8
  • 18
9
votes
4 answers

Can I (reasonably) refuse to sign an NDA for pro bono work?

A friend of mine (let's call him Joe) is working on a promising project, and has asked me for help. As a matter of friendship I agreed (orally) not to discuss the details, but now he has a potential investor who wants me to sign a non-disclosure…
kojiro
  • 2,105
  • 1
  • 15
  • 29
8
votes
1 answer

Enforcement of returning non-null

We are implementing some web services, and need to ensure that some of our methods always return non-null values. We've investigated two ways of doing this: Using code contracts, and returning the default value using Ensures constraints on the…
Peter K.
  • 3,828
  • 1
  • 23
  • 34
1
2 3 4