On Sun, 15 Feb 2015 09:53:46 -0600, Jack Bates said:
want IP; legal protection). One way around this, most likely, is to establish your art as public domain (allowing you continued use of the foundation work, while losing the more specific details associated with that one project). By doing so, you may be able to protect the art itself. A lawyer would know best, of course.
Actually, doesn't even take a laweyer. "Public domain" has a very specific meaning, and is probably *not* what you want in this case. It basically means "I disavow ownership and all rights to this, and anybody can take this and do whatever they want with it, including making money off it". Most importantly, you can't even waive liability - this is why stuff like the MIT X11 or similar licenses got created - you need to keep your rights in order to attach a "by taking this, you promise not to sue me to my skivvies".clause. If you put it in the public domain, somebody can take it, change it, use it, make a ton of money off it, and then *still* sue you to your skivvies if it malfunctions (say, their network breaks because you didn't include any anti-DDoS support, but you could have, and they get hit with one). Now here's were you want to double-check with a lawyer. Make your base code a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license - people can make copies of it, but can't make derivative works (in other words, they can't make changes to fit their environment) or use it for commercial purposes (which is a game stopper if you're trying to make money off it). You still have all rights, so you can then negotiate the rights to the difference between your base and the particular client's install, That may still be non-optimal for your use, because everybdoy can make a copoy - but if you were OK with public domain, that's probably not a show-stopper here. Would be if you wanted to keep trade secrecy status on your base (so consult a good IP lawyer ;)