Ideal EULA for Custom Software?

Tiger4 asks: ""End User License Agreements (EULA) for custom developed software present a nasty problem for both developers and the customer. What rights does should the developer grant to the user, and what rights should be retained by the developer to capitalize on their effort? Similarly, the customer, who is paying for the work, wants all the rights possible to maximize their investment, but probably only needs a small subset of them, such as maintenance and upgrades. The developer probably wants to be able to re-use and resell chunks of the code; the customer doesn't want single source lock-in, so they want re-use and alteration rights too. The Open Source licenses don't solve all ills, because some processes and data may be trade secrets, or at least closely held in an industry. So what terms should definitely be in a EULA, to provide both maximum flexibility and protection for both developers and customers?"

Comments

Re:None

[Ohreally_factor]

You've brought up an excellent point, but it's not always so black and white. Ownership of the copyright can (and should be be) subject to the negotiations of the contract before any work begins. If the agreement is work for hire, then you are absolutely right. But what if the project reuses code to which you already hold copyright? See, it can get a little ambigious, which is why it's important to examine all possible angles during negotiation and then spell it out in the contract.

I might be assuming too much, but it sounds like the OOP, Tiger,

1) Doesn't know what the hell he is talking about;

2) Thinks he can backdoor some rights into the software after-the-fact with a EULA.