Sinclair Basic, on my ZX Spectrum 48K...! :) back in '84-'85. Those were the days. And because I didn't had enough allowance to buy a tape recorder, I wrote my first 2-3 games out of a coding book to play for as long as speccy was on... :)

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No matter how bad the economy is, it should never be a leverage for the bad employer. And this is the case more and more often nowadays. Like you said, eventhough I am very frustrated and annoyed with all, I created the thread in order to see all opinions, there were some useless, some preocupied and some good as yours, even though I can not persuade my self to agree with you totaly..:) It is a very sad true that sometimes it is needed to just play along for the sake of living. I have too much pride for that to play along this time. Pride costs, I know. I would mostly give away the source along with a compromising letter for the sake of my reputation. I know from experience how awfull it can for future emploers to hear bad things for you "eventhough the coding was excellent", just because you didn't do the clown and did not lower your head in all cases. I do not trust them to work again and being with them for some time I have realized they wont exist for more, unless they become professionals, which I don't see it happen in their lifetime...But I can not forsee the future and that is always a possibility in which our paths may come across again. I think your opinion was quite enlightening and had clean and stable arguments. Add the fact that my wife holds the same opinion...I see myself bending towards it. Thank you for your response.

Thank you for your replay Roy. Most of what you say is quite right but I guess along all the replies -it's somewhere there...- the fact that my client did not payed what agreed makes things a bit different. As I said in the beginning this is not a contract, but more of a gentlement's agreement work. The part where I disagree with you totally is where you say "Do whatever it takes to make the customer happy". We are obligated to do what we are payed for and in good faith I always do more. When the client does not pay you what agreed then the agreement fails. It is terrible to act on fear and lose what you have rightfully earned. I do not want to work anymore with that person for that and a lot more reasons. I would only give a portion of the dlls rewritten which would need time and it costs hence I requested a small amount of money for that. I have nothing to apologize from my side. There are allways bad customers who would try to create bad reputation even if all you did was excelent and even if you worked for free...

Wicked! But in a good sense. :) I appreciate the experience you are sharing. In my case I made sure to obfuscate the dll's of my personal framework and DAL with a commercial product making sure it could not be tampered and no source has been given except for SQL procedures. The difference in the money paid in the end was not as much as the issue, it was not too much loss, but its more the frustration as you so well point out as "emotionally costly"; at the point the "friend" does not intend to do what agreed and justifies it with ridiculous excuses then all trust is lost and it's time to walk out. Saying that the truth lied in the middle was for the part that I did get a portion of the money agreed, client got all working parts in executables but no source code for them, since it had not been asked in the first place. After I saw that the payment will not be as agreed, I proposed a change in the collaboration base, from a non contracted part time to a non contracted project base work, analyzing and pricing what would be requested first, developed, deployed to my personal server, UAT, payment and then upload to the production server. Which was accepted but... The thing that really irritated me, was that the next email I got was saying we have to first validate what is done so far, before we go to project base, upload all code and then we go to that. And we are talking about things given, accepted and being in production for months now... So I counter-proposed to be payed in advance for the source code, and no work after that, since it's obvious "there is a failure in communication"..! This was today. I have no new replies on that, nor I expect one. To be honest I'd prefer not hearing from that person again. I would no longer work under any circumstance with someone who thinks he can outsmart you and continuously tries to find ways to do that.

Then you know how things are with outsourcing projects and their source code. Very different. "That would be an issue, I agree." That is our issue in the first place...

Expressing that software and code should be free is not trolling? I should not even respond to that. And will not to any more that are useless to the thread started.

A few messages above you addressed yourself as a project manager. No reason to point accusations about my work, in any case, though. I know what I handed out, I never even give only what expected but more as a token of good faith and because I am 10 years in the business and having a good name is vital. So again, all requested was handed, tested, approved, welcomed and appreciated. Payment after that was less than agreed and was justified as the "current situation" that exists in Europe at the time, in no way -not even as an excuse- there was any notion about my work being not acceptable or less than requested in any way. Client then asks for everything from code, without payment. In no project and no country that is correct.

And I have too worked as a Project Manager and Team Leader, and absolutely know the risks and hazards from that side.

No, in no case. I got paid less than agreed after providing all expected. The case with the code became afterwards. I allready described the case in the beginning. For another time, after not getting what expected in payment I would only give code after payment. You keep showing that you are preoccupied... From my side, even though this is a discussion originating to developers I do honour and want to hear clearly from all sides. The facts are: 1.Code should be given to clients. No question about that. 2.Clients hire experienced developers coming with frameworks that can finish work in more professional way and in far less time that rewritting from scratch or cleaning down. 3.In case a professional has a framework it should be stated that it is going to be used and no code inner source should be given unless otherwise stated, in which case as all outsourcing companies do, the source is extra money. And non related to work but very important: 4.When nothing is written nothing is expected, unfortunatelly either from payment or from work.

Exactly. And that covers it all. Nothing "should" be given, and foremore nothing different is given that what was asked. Everything asked is and should be priced and written down and that's that. Which is exactly the point of the discussion. And to answer to previous post to Albert Holguin, nor I am "justifying" anything or need to. I handed out all asked and didn't even got paid what agreed. I think he is a bit pre-occupied since being on the "other side" :).

I see now that you don't really grasp the idea. Code would still be reused, developed etc. Do you have the code in mscorelib.dll of visual studio? You use it.

I couldn't disagree more.. I get paid for my expertise. Over the years I have created a codebase - personal framework - that gives me the ability to finish projects that would take 1 month in less that a week. That is not to be shared, it would be like hiring an inexperienced emploee for a job and he would be using a guru doing his work free of charge. Nothing is meant to be free, otherwise people would pay for it... If we want to hand out code out of generosity, that does not in anyway mean that code or software should bre free... :laugh: Let's not start trolling with each other and continue our conversation with examples and point of views.

The truth lies somewhere in the middle, I got paid less that agreed, became sceptic and holded all work from there on till we rearranged our agreement, then the client asked for source code of everything fearing the more than expected fact of me walking out of the equation. He loses more than I do in this case, because (a) my dlls are secured and (b) it's original work so it would need me to at least pass some experience and source in order to continue supporting the projects. I don't think is something to go legal for, from either side, since as I mentioned it was a contractless project this one. No contracts, no formal agreements, no signatures rather than our word, which is in most cases easily forgotten and not honoured..

To not get out of our subject though, because I fear we are close to that, the idea is not whether to hande out source code, but the source of additional dlls that create a code base created by the author.

Yes ofcourse, you allways want a way to reuse, expand or solve a new bug after all colaboration is finished and they are on their own. But it is completely different when you are working as a freelancer. All must be predefined to avoid misinterpretations of what should and what should not be handed out. Code belongs to both the author and the company that the project is originated for. You may reuse your code but you can not present a solution created by even only you in a company as yours. On the other hand, when there is code that you bring along that is a totaly yours. Code that you might have developed on your spare time, or as a colaboration of you and 5 other friends...whatever. Noone can get hands on those assemblies unless the truly copyrighted author agrees to hand it out. And that would be for fellow programmers mostly, not for commercial use, otherwise there's no point getting paid for our work...! :)

I wouldn't want to expose him, even though this came to be one of the worst outsource projects I had so far. To satisfy your curiosity a bit, he was born and raised outside the country, in Europe though, and 1 parent was from totally different country also. So it's a universal problem! :-D It's exactly like that. Ofcourse to secure things, for the final hand out, I asked to be payed in advance -take it or leave it way, because of all these issues... I offered to do a final addition of the source code, rewriting out only necessary parts and not the complete personal framework ofcourse, just out of professionalism. And ofcourse I note again that no source has been asked to be handed out throughout our "agreement". I share this mostly to remind to us all to be very accurate in all our transactions, no "friends" exist when you are exchanging money in any way, and even after 10 years in the business, there are people who think they can make a sucker out of you... :) Kala ta les kai pali...

Couldn't agree more. :)

True. But, as you might realized, this was not discussed before hand, if it was there would be no gray areas. Theses issues allways come along when the cooperation starts to fade due to problems from one or both sides. Added to that, ther was no contract to bind anything, it was more of a gentlemen's agreement this one. And the client did not even honour the payment as initially agreed.

Let's say you are working as a freelancer and along with the executables you hand out, in the end of your cooperation the source is asked by the client. Within the source though lie some dlls of your personal framework and the client insists on you giving it also. My response was to pay extra for all, about the 2/5s of the overall price, as most companies selling components do to hand out the source code. In any way I would not hand out the source to my framework, rather rewrite using only necessary classes and methods. What's your opinion?