Here's the dilemma in a slightly different context.
I -love- the game Master of Orion II. Every few months I dust it off and spend an entire weekend on it. Because I control the software, I can continue to enjoy it 13 years after the developer folded.
I built a Facebook game a few years back. The company that owns it decided to shut it down. I get messages -every day- from people who are dying to play again. But there's nothing they can do, they don't control the software.
> I built a Facebook game a few years back. The company that owns it decided to shut it down. I get messages -every day- from people who are dying to play again. But there's nothing they can do, they don't control the software.
Did you retain any rights, such that you could white-label and de-facebook-ize it, and stick it up on a webpage?
That's pretty unusual in contracted work. The customer would (not without reason) fear that you'd get them to pay for development and then just go ahead and rebrand it as a competing service. I generally try to retain rights on anything but "business logic" and UI but won't push very hard for it unless I'm going to be re-using my own code in the project.
It'd be interesting to have a clause stipulating that if the customer shuts down their instance of your code permanently, you reserve the right to start up your own. Do you think anyone could get away with that?
I -love- the game Master of Orion II. Every few months I dust it off and spend an entire weekend on it. Because I control the software, I can continue to enjoy it 13 years after the developer folded.
I built a Facebook game a few years back. The company that owns it decided to shut it down. I get messages -every day- from people who are dying to play again. But there's nothing they can do, they don't control the software.