Rollo - 2:56 pm on May 14, 2006 (gmt 0)

Actually, they don't offer any development license and are the most inflexible developers I've ever met. We've asked them about this change and that change, and their answer is always "that can't be done." Fundamental things like creating meta tags or assigning ID numbers data to similar entered by users in multiple languages so it can be searched and sorted. A lack of these things alone would make it unusable. We have been developing it for a couple months, improving it, and are getting close to launch, but this all makes me a bit nervous given their attitude. They may see this as an opportunity to try to make some quick cash.

Thier terms call it a licence in order to get around rights of ownership. It also states we may not "reverse assemble, adapt, modify, reverse compile, or otherwise translate" the code. And also that only one backup can be kept which is of course impossible when developing the code as multiple copies are needed. They lay out clauses about injunctions, damages, court costs, etc.

Their contractual limitations on code we purchased seem to have been shot down by the 2nd circuit court in a recent opinion in Krause v. Titleserv, Inc. [caselaw.lp.findlaw.com] but I was wondering if anyone else had any knowledge of similar decisions or any to the contrary where people that modified code under similar circumstances got their ass handed to them?

We're going to go ahead and launch likely as I can't imagine that even if they sued they'd win and if they won they'd get much in the way of damages as modifying their code causes them ZERO loss of revenue and we're using the code completely for the purposes it was intended to be used. At this point, the investment in our development is a sunk cost anyway.