Release a Paid Addon?

[Lazorbeam]

Hello everyone,

A few months ago I paid to have a mod developed for one of my sites. It just occurred to me that this mod might be very beneficial to the community, but I'm not sure if I'm allowed to release it.

Any idea?

PS: It was an affiliate mod for subscriptions.

[Reycer]

Better ask the author. If they retained copyright to it, then I would assume that he/she wouldn't appreciate you releasing it without their knowledge.

[final kaoss]

No, you are not allowed to release it. The person who developed & made it is the only one who has a say so, since it is his work. Unless he told you otherwise in some form that he didn't care if you released it or not.

[Zachery]

Originally Posted by final kaoss

No, you are not allowed to release it. The person who developed & made it is the only one who has a say so, since it is his work. Unless he told you otherwise in some form that he didn't care if you released it or not.

That's not really true. It really depends on the type of contract or nature of the work.

It is fairly normal for someone who pays for development of custom software to retain the rights to it.

Contact the vendor you used, to be on the safe side.

[Lazorbeam]

Originally Posted by Reycer

Better ask the author. If they retained copyright to it, then I would assume that he/she wouldn't appreciate you releasing it without their knowledge.

Not really sure I agree. Let's say you hired a coder to write a program for you - the coder won't retain any rights to the code at all.

This isn't the exact same situation though, so we'll see.

[nhawk]

As has been said, it depends on the software and the agreement when the mod was written.

Several of my custom mods, used only by who they were written for contain this clause..

2. Purchaser acknowledges that this is only a limited nonexclusive license. Snog's vBulletin Mods is and remains the owner of all titles, rights, and interests in the Software.

EDIT: A perfect example of this is my raffle system. It was written years before release on vB.org for one particular site. If that clause wasn't in the agreement, when the site went belly up I couldn't have released it as a free mod here on vB.org.

I would never have released it if the original site was still in existence, or without the original owner's permission if the site was still around. But I could have just because that clause was in there.