Dealing w/ Outside Interests in Your Projects?

Anthony Boyd asks: "Last weekend, I built a web site that is a poor-man's version of Classmates. Except that it is custom-built just for my high-school, with no ads or fees. I got a fine response from the people that knew about it, and was busy reconnecting with lost friends... until [last week], when my school's alumni association called and gave me an earful of comments such as, 'that's a rogue site' and 'it may not be legal!' Turns out, they hoped to build something similar, as a platform to entice donations. So, I'm stuck. Before I do anything, I'd like to ask Slashdot: have the projects you built for 'just for fun' been overrun by outside interests? If so, what did you do, and what would you have done differently?"

Comments

Alumni relations- don't worry about it

[captainktainer]

Yes, it's legal. Assuming your school wasn't a private school, you can hook up as many people as you want for whatever price you want- as long as you make it clear that you're not an employee or affiliate of the school.. You're matchmaking based on a common interest, i.e. that school.

If they contact you about it again, tell them politely that you're exercising your rights as a public citizen and serving as a resource for alumni. If they would like to cooperate with you to avoid competiting services, that would be lovely; however, in the interests of alumni relations you would suggest that they cease their threats of legal action to avoid the inevitable bad press and probable decline in alumni support, as well as the embarrassing and ultimately expensive legal battle. If you keep getting problems, use your alumni network to find legal representation.

If it's a private school, though, you may well be screwed. I doubt it, but you may.

i'd fight

[Anonvmous Coward]

I personally have never been in that situation. That being said, I can't help but think I'd fight it. "Tell me why this is illegal. Tell me why you should be the only player in town. Tell me why we can't work something out."

If they can't answer that, then I'd keep it going until I recieved a cease and desist. Assuming that there isn't any legal issues with the students names being printed there, what's the BFD?

Like I said, I'd fight, though I wouldn't rule out compromise. Maybe you could support donations for them?

Re:Send them packing

[BrynM]

Chances are, if he did it for the school and did it at the school at all, then they own it. To me, it sounds as if he's going to a private school (let me know if I'm right or wrong). I too went to a private school with a very fervent alumni association. Since they are what brings in the donations for sports, scholarships, arts projects and school renovations, you will have a hard time trying to fight them for dominance.

I propose offering them a compromise. Change your scope. Let them build theirs and offer it as a paid members only section for alumni (and parents too - if your school is well-to-do enough) while you develop and build yours as a student body only site. With membership may come the ability to log into the student side an interact with "the future of their old school". Grant students access to the alumni section for the first two years after graduation (the hook) and charge them for one-time/monthly/annual membership after that.

This way, you get to interact with your fellow students and free reign to code and the alums get a donation business model. If you play your cards right and cooperate with them, you may even end up with a starter web design job right out of high school (either way, you've got resume material) and good standing in the associaion after you graduate. Remember to stay calm and bargain with them. If you can, find a way to maybe do some work on what they are developing as well.

Let them know that you have something to offer and that they could stand to create a renewable revenue stream. Two items not to back down on are:

1. They host both sites. Since you're entering an agreement with them, they need to pay for the bandwidth and not risk losing it should you go to college.
2. You are the lead programmer for your portion. Don't let them take your baby and hand it to someone who doesn't care. If you've gone this far, tell them that you did it out of school pride. They can hire any monkey to code but they can't just go out an contract school pride or loyalty.

Welcome to the software and web design business. You've got a good head start.

...But if you coded it alone, host it yourself and don't do any of it at school... Take your ball and go home. Keep the site going and strip it of any affiliation to the school. Apologize to the alumni and tell them that it will never again have any of your school's "branding". Develop it for a couple of years and - if it gets popular - sell it off. You can get a whole lot more money selling a popular finished site to some local company than the alumni association would be willing to give you, but it would take time and self promotion.

Good luck!

Fight and, moreover, post your fight.

[Tom7]

If you don't like this kind of bullying, definitely don't give in. Post your correspondence on your web page, with as little editorializing as possible, and let others draw their own conclusions. If their behavior is outrageous enough, I'm sure you'll find that it results in a lot of bad publicity for them, and the last thing they want is for students to have a good excuse to hate the association when they call asking for money. Go ahead and stick a paypal link on the site that lets alums donate to the school at their discretion. Make sure you use trademarks carefully (you can check a primer about this many places online), and build your site with renewed purpose. ;)

Spurious legal threats, be they from lawyers or just the old boys' club, are one of the worst problems in the legal climate today. Since there's so little cost to fire off a Cease and Desist letter that sounds scary but is essentially contentless, corporations do it as a last resort to harass small developers who they'd never be able to beat in court. The only way I know of to fix this situation is to make there be a *high cost* for waging war against the small guy, and this could easily come in the form of bad publicity if people don't just shut down their sites right away.

By the way, yes, this has happened to me several times. Most recently was my battle with the DMCA over flipping embedding bits .

Re:War is the last resort

[Atzanteol]

Oh puh-lease! They accuse him of possible illegal activities and he's supposed to just turn the other cheek (no, his *other* cheeks) and take it? Fuck them. They could have approached this better. Any wrath brought upon them is their own fault.

Tell him to save the olive branch for when he's truly done something wrong.