What the difference between Consulting and Contracting
In regards to programming, what is the difference between being a contractor, and a consultant? ...
contracts
What can I do about my employer's intellectual property policy?
I've just started a new job, and the company's policy is that they own all intellectual property I create - whether I create it on their time or on my own. That means I can't contribute to open source software, since I can't give away their property. Has anyone experienced this? Does anyone have suggestions on how to convince the comp...
What's a good way to manage casual development work?
I was recently approach by someone I don't know asking if I wanted to do some programming work for him (on behalf of a client he has). The job is a short term project which involves writing a small visualisation tool in Processing. Because I don't know this guy I am looking for advice on how to best manage the working relationship. For ...
Signing an Inventions Assignment Agreement
My hopefully-soon-to-be employer has asked me to sign an Inventions Assignment Agreement. Generally, the contract seems fine, as they wish to ensure their IP is protected and that I'm not screwing around on them. However, it makes no exception for work done on my own time/equipment that is unrelated to their business (my state has no l...
States having nonassignable invention exceptions similar to California Code Section 2870
Standard employment agreements stipulate that the employing company owns all inventions and discoveries produced during the period of employment. California code section 2870 exempts inventions produced outside of work and without use of company facilities by California employees: 2870. (a) Any provision in an employment agreement whi...
To NDA or not to NDA?
Assuming a small off-hours development project that may or may not have market value but which the project owner does not want to open source (or at least not at the moment). What is the proper way to formally state this intention to potential collaborators? Is a non-disclosure agreement over board? I know many people are weary of sig...
What is the logic and legality behind "I own you" contracts?
After reading "Dealbreakers for new programming jobs?" I was thinking about those "I own you"-contracts. To cite Chris Jester-Young: The lack of ability to own code I write on my personal time, on my personal machine, that are not related to anything work-related. I have never seen something like that. I mean we are payed to write...
Contracts in C# 4.0
If I have a Vector3.Normalize() method that specifies a post condition where the resultant Vector3 is gonna have a length of 1, how would the compiler check for this at compile time (or before)? Does it just pass a random Vector3 variable to the method? ...
Source for paid software and web site contract templates
Related to this question looking for free software programming contracts, what source do you recommend for paid software contract templates? I have not found decent free ones on the web that cover contracts for custom software development, web site development and web site hosting. So I am considering ContractEdge which provides a paid s...
How do you find a lawyer who is able to answer software development questions?
Many answers to questions on stackoverflow about issues related to contracts, copyright, patents, licensing, advise the questioner to consult a lawyer. This sounds like good advice, but I believe the advice would be a lot more useful if there was more detail to the 'ask a lawyer' answer. Where can I find a list of lawyers that are expe...
Adding custom developed code to software product
In your opinion is it common and ethical to do custom software development for a Customer and then add that software to your base product which is available to your other customers? My take on it is that: It's a contractual issue between you and the Customer. It's done often (although maybe not 'common'). It's similar to the Customer ...
Term for "open" number of hours for an assigned person/resource on an IT contract?
Hi guys. Quick question...my wife is drafting a small agreement for her the IT company she works for to work with another IT company in which her company will lend or assign programmers, without limiting or specifying the length of time that the resource will be assigned. The two companies have worked before and the agreement had a dat...
Microsoft Contracts: Assembly load resulted in metadata import warning
I'm trying to learn my way around the Microsoft Code Contracts libraries, and I have the following simple function: internal static Engine CreateBuildEngine(Microsoft.Build.Framework.ILogger logger) { Contract.Requires( logger != null ); var engine = new Engine { DefaultToolsVersion = "3.5" }; engine.RegisterLogger(logger);...
Finding software development contracts
For the last few years I've been working as a self-employed software developer. Doing various gigs as they came my way. For the most part I've been fairly lucky, as my own personal network has yielded all the work I need to sustain myself and then some. As I said, I've been lucky to get all my contracts, I haven't had to put any real eff...
WCF contract for Field level update
I'm developing an application that does some CRUD operations through a WCF service. The read method returns a complete entity, the update is performed through a legacy system, and only the changed values should be updated. What is the best way to design the data contract for this scenario without simply sending a dictionary of key-value...
Is there any value in seperating wcf service contracts from your interface definition?
I have an interface ICustomerService: public interface ICustomerService { CustomerList FindAll(); } and a concrete class implementing that interface. Now I need to expose the method over the web using wcf/rest and I've had to change the interface definition to this: [ServiceContract] public interface ICustomerService { [Operati...
Contracts vs Exceptions
Let's assume I have the following code: public class MainClass { public static void main(String[] args) { System.out.println(sumNumbers(10, 10)); } //@requires a >= 10; //@ensures \result < 0; public static int sumNumbers(int a, int b) { return a+b; } } I can make 2 things here: Use Code Contr...
Action and ReplyAction in WCF Proxy
What is the use of Action and ReplyAction in OperationContract attribute ? ...
WCF Fault not being propagated to the client properly
We've got the following WCF Service Contracts: [ServiceContract(Namespace = "http://example.com", Name = "Service1")] public interface IService1 { [OperationContract] [FaultContract(typeof(Fault1))] ValidateUserResult ValidateUser( string username, string password); } [ServiceC...
What does "Prior Inventions And Original Works Of Authorship" mean?
I'm about to start a job and they want a list of "Prior Inventions And Original Works Of Authorship". What exactly should I include? Should I include anything I can point at that I've worked on? Should I include stuff I've worked on for past employers? What about stuff that is owned by an LLC I'm a partner in? Can I put down "anything in...