Thread

So,
  After slaving away for 50 or so hours on a project for a client, I was asked by them if they could see the license.  I of-course told them that I was using ci for the project.  Here’s the deal, they refused the work b/c of the legal implications of ci’s license.  wtf… they were saying that by using ci I was opening myself and anyone i did work for to a possible lawsuit.  If it were under gpl, they would’ve had no problem.  Any advice on this anyone.  Something that was brought up was the ongoing SCO/IBM lawsuit and how this was similiar.

They kept coming back to, we’ve never heard of ci… We don’t know their reputation or if their legit.  I defended my good ole CI and EE but it was a crapshoot.  This crap has never happened to me before.

You could point out that there are books written for both CI and EE. Sitepoint just released a downloadable video tutorial for EE, too. That pretty much makes it - um - kinda legit(?)

If you had the details of how they compared it to the SCO/IBM lawsuit, I’d be interested to hear. Because - after all - isn’t that the one that SCO is losing / lost big time?

I brought that up about sco/ibm’s deal and I guess a couple of the companies have settled(don’t know if this is true or not).  But I just don’t think that’s the case here and even if it was, these were probably just companies who were sick up putting up with them.

At any rate, I don’t see how having a GPL license would really make that much difference, the license covers everything.

Did this client already paid you for your work or did he discuss about the CI license and don’t want to pay you because of the license?

2 options:

1. Suck up the loss, don’t deliver their code.

2. Sue them in small claims court (if your state allows you to sue someone from out of state, California does) as the CI license obviously does not hinder their ability to use the app you created in any shape or form (they are literally allowed to do anything with it).

Your contract should have a line that says all legal disputes will be handled in the [Name Your County], [Name Your State]. Your contract should also mention that you may use open-source software and third party libraries as long as the license of those libraries does not interfere with the clients “right to ownership” of the delivered goods.

I’ve went through this twice in the past, and won my case both times. In Santa Barbara county it costs no more than $75 to file a claim, usually $50 for the range of damages I am seeking (this is also why you should have a payment release schedule, so the amount of work the client has not paid you for yet never exceeds $2-3K).

Don’t forget to document your time working on your case as well - that’s lost wages and you can throw that right on top of how much you are suing for.

Finally - why didn’t you tell them you were using CodeIgniter from the beginning? It’s always much, much, easier to be honest and open from the get-go.

I don’t want to comment on your specific case, but I do have something to add here.

Although often criticized for not opening up code contributions more to the community, this is one place where its a monumental strength.  Every single file, line, and character in CI (and EE for that matter) was written by EllisLab staff, or used with permission and after being donated in the unusual but not unheard of case of community contributions, after being vetted by a staff member.  There is absolutely no guessing about origin, ownership, rights, etc.  Our livelihood depends on this.

If you had written every single line of code yourself, it would offer your client perhaps less security.  I would also add that even if you took all Open Source issues aside, and pretended for a moment that all OS licenses were somehow invalidated legally (bear with me), then we default back to ownership.  Guess who owns the code, and has given you and your client explicit permission to use it?