Re: FN-FORUM Charging for Object Oriented Code

date posted 8th April 2001 13:18

On Sat, Apr 07, 2001 at 11:19:12AM +0100, Antonio Gould wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Does anyone here use object oriented code for writing web applications (In
> php or asp preferably)?

Yes - although it is Perl rather than php or asp - I guess the same
problems apply.


>
> How do you cost the creation of these objects? For instance, if you create
> a generic shopping basket which will work on any site, how do you charge
> for this? Do you charge the first client who requests it for the creation
> of the object, or do you charge each client you use it for the amount it
> cost you to build it?


I have a created set of modules that will drive parts of an e-commerce
site - customers, orders, shopping basket, products, categories, vouchers,
news, newsletter, banners, etc.

Each customer is charged a license fee that is considerably less than
a bespoke system would be (so we are competitive), but more than most
of the "one size fits all" off the shelf packages. All customers who
have bought the modules receive free updates, and free access to any
new modules that we bolt on for as long as they have a site maintenance
agreement. We retain intellectual property rights in the code.

Customers don't in general know that they have an object-oriented solution -
probably for the best, as they might ask for a discount if they realise
they are getting a 're-usable' solution.



>
> Also, do you make an issue of them being able to use it in the future? (If
> it's in php you can't really stop this as far as I know as you can't
> protect the source code - there's no equivalent of making a DLL like you
> can on a Windows system)


Just make sure your license agreement is legally watertight. No matter what
you do to protect your code, there's always some hacker who can copy it.
So make sure you have a good, written agreement with your customer.