Thread

I am new to blogging and open source and internet development. I am a business person (coded a lot in COBOL nearly 30 years ago, worked in the software industry for many years, primary skill is that of an entrepreneurial business analyst) who wants to develop a highly interactive, content rich website that I believe will be of value to a number of geographically disperse groups. I have tentatively chosen EE as the main tool to develop this site. It will also utilize plug-ins and add-ons, and it will have significant PHP custom development. My questions regard what commercial rights and opportunities I have to my design and soon to be developed site, relative to the ExpressionEngine Module License, which I have read but don’t fully comprehend.

1. Will I be able to sell my design, including the code to execute it to other groups? I am not trying to prevent anyone from getting their license revenue - I’ll be sure that is paid one way or another. I want to be able to market and sell my design in the most efficient manner. Certainly the next group would not want to redevelop it!

2. If I have an EE Developer put together my initial website, must I then share any of my commercial rights with that developer? What is typical in this day and industry? What must I include in the contract to be sure we are clear on who owns what?

3. I will do some of the site maintenance myself and I expect some of the custom PHP development (its got to be better than COBOL or Fortran, eh?) and I expect to hire an EE developer down the road. If an EE Developer develops my initial website, what must I secure to be fully capable of future maintenance and development of my product in the future, without necessarily involving the original EE Developer?

I’d love to hear from other developers and other business people on any of this, and of course an official response. Thank you in advance for your help, insight and suggestions. Dan

Hi DanG,

Welcome to the forums 😊

1. Will I be able to sell my design, including the code to execute it to other groups? I am not trying to prevent anyone from getting their license revenue - I’ll be sure that is paid one way or another. I want to be able to market and sell my design in the most efficient manner. Certainly the next group would not want to redevelop it!

You can certainly sell the templates you create along with any resources they need like images, JavaScript etc but you are not allowed to include EE in that package that you sell. The group you sell it too must own a license and then they can implement your themes after purchase

2. If I have an EE Developer put together my initial website, must I then share any of my commercial rights with that developer? What is typical in this day and industry? What must I include in the contract to be sure we are clear on who owns what?

This is something you will need to work out with the developer. Each developer will be slightly different when it comes to this aspect of contracting work.

3. I will do some of the site maintenance myself and I expect some of the custom PHP development (its got to be better than COBOL or Fortran, eh?) and I expect to hire an EE developer down the road. If an EE Developer develops my initial website, what must I secure to be fully capable of future maintenance and development of my product in the future, without necessarily involving the original EE Developer?

I am not quite sure what answer you might be expecting here. You typically will have hosting and FTP details before you contract a developer. You might also get said developer to document any changes that were not of a standard install. Note a standard install and design of an EE site does not need a hard core developer to work on it. EE was designed with the designer and developer in mind so anybody with a good knowledge of HTML and CSS would be able to build a site easily in EE

I hope that goes some-way in answering your questions. They are quite broad in a sense esp when the unknown party (developer) will always bring their own set of obligations to the table

Thanks John,

This question came up a couple of days ago and we’ve gotten a lot of general input (good and I’m sure bad input) but still I’m not sure I can do what I want to. So, here is a better question:

I’m building a website/blog/forum/etc. that will be just what I want for my fairly special purpose (highly configured, templates, a bunch of add-ons and plug-ins, and signficant custom PHP programing). It will have quite a lot of content in the database after a few months. This content will be 40% generic and 60% geographically specific to my city.

What I want to do is sell my setup to a friend in another city, where he would get an exact copy of my website (with all its configuration, templates, add-ons, plug-ins and customization plus the 40% of the data that is generic - posted blogs and articles), but it would have a different domain name (might be on the same server), no members, no forum entries, etc. He would then develop content for his city and promote to a new set of members.

Assuming I have the right to sell what has been developed for me (I get that now), and my friend has purchased the EE license and all required add-ons and plug-ins licenses, can I send him a copy of my stuff (what should I call this stuff?) so he can load it in his domain and be good to go? Yes I understand there would still need to be some configuration and set up, but hopefully very minimal.

Is there a name for this technology transfer and business sale that I want to do? Is this technically possible? Is it legally permitted relative to everybody’s licensing?

Thank you for your help,

Dan

Hi, Dan.

As long as your friend has his very own license, he’s good to go as far as EllisLab is concerned. Each third party vendor will still be paid, and as long as you have the rights for the custom PHP code developed for you, that should be OK too.

Interesting business model. Let us know how things work out.

Thank you John and Sue.

I will work out the nitty details with you and others, if I ever get that far.

Consider this questions closed; I am ready to buy, as soon as I find an EE developer to see if I can afford to start! I have a posting in the EE Job Board.

Cheers,

Dan

Dan, you may want to head to Build Guild in Albany. There are many good EE guys that go like Jack McDade & Tom Jaeger who are well respected EE addon devs.

Thank you Lab Technician. I am amazed at the proximity. I initially searched EE Professionals by location and the closest I could find was NYC. Albany is a lot closer!
Thanks, Dan

No bother. I know Jack & Tom personally and they are both solid developers.

Beautiful part of the country up your way….almost moved there last summer but it fell through :down:

Thanks to everyone for the assistance.  Dan, if anything else comes up, please start a new thread.  Thank you =)