Re: policies, slightly OT
This WebDNA talk-list message is from 2004
It keeps the original formatting.
numero = 59657
interpreted = N
texte = > After having been my own client for 6 years, for the past year or so > I've been doing sites for others. In a few weeks I'm having a lawyer > put together my legalese, and would appreciate some guidelines and how > others address these issues, and if there's something else I need to > address. Aside from typical boilerplate stuff my attorney surely has > for other business clients, I want to clarify a couple of things: In 10 years of business I have found that customers TOTALLY HATE legalese contracts. The longer you make them the harder it will be to have them sign. My contracts used to be 12 pages long because my attorney was a nut! In recent years there has been a debate over "plane English" contracts and if they will hold up in court. I've been informed they will, so we rewrote our programming and hosting contract in understandable English. Most of the legalese has been omitted except for a few things that can't be avoided. It now only take a few hours for a customer to sign our contracts once we email them. We used to wait weeks for them to send the contract to their attorney for review. They never liked the attorney cost either. My customers range from very small to somewhat large, from all around the country, and they all react badly to legalese contracts. The general point of view has always been that they felt we were hiding something... after all we are "only" programming a web site. > > 1) that they don't own the code, I do; that they're only buying a > service that happens to present their information in a web browser, or > something to that affect. I have found that customers hate this idea. If they have a simple site without DBs it's one thing to give them their site but keep the email scripts. But we consider ourselves a web software developer. The customer pays us for our time to create scripts for them. Sometimes the scripts are used on several sites, and sometimes they are not. I've had more customers appreciate the time savings and the cost savings associated with reusing code from our previous projects. Nothing is ever perfect, so there is always a little time needed to tweak scripts. Having these "canned" scripts has allowed us to speed up our development process and also increase our rates. > > 3) that I have to host the site, and if they decide to take their > business elsewhere..., well, I really don't know how to address this > one, or if I even need to (see no. 1). We make them host with us as well. We tell them that they are free to leave, but they will need to host with another WebDNA provider to get there system to run. So yes, we would freely give them all our uncommented code and the next guy will have fun trying to figure it all out. > > 4) something about liability in case they try to blame the site for > their business failure, data loss, or some such BS. (on the sites > where I maintain a membership or other direct DB, I give them a link > to a tab-delimited text file of their data so they can make their own > data backups; also I backup the server nightly, albeit to a local HD, > so if the building goes up in smoke... well, I do mean to set up an > offsite Retrospect BU strategy before too long) Here: ACKNOWLEDGMENTS OF CUSTOMER: Customer hereby understands and acknowledges that: - Psi Prime is cannot guarantee that your competed web site will increase your business, or accomplish any goal expected. - We cannot guarantee your web site to appear in any search engine. Psi Prime follows search engine submission rules as published on Google.com. However, just because we follow those rules does not mean your web site will ever get listed or achieve top search engine ranking. Psi Prime will use it's best efforts to get your site listed according you your requests. - Psi Prime is not responsible if your web site is miscategorized in any search engine. - YOU will be responsible for the accuracy and adequacy of all information contained in YOUR web pages, as well as the liability imposed by any federal and state laws, including but not limited to copyright laws. Here: LIMITS OF LIABILITY: Psi Prime and it's suppliers' liability is limited to the amount paid for this service product. In no event shall Psi Prime or its suppliers be liable to any person or entity for incidental, consequential, indirect or special damages of any nature, including without limitation loss of business profits, income or data. Or this one: LIMITATION OF LIABILITY - Psi Prime's liability for any damages, losses and causes of actions shall not exceed the actual dollar amount paid by Customer for the Service which gave rise to such damages, losses and causes of actions during the 12-month period prior to the date the damage or loss occurred or the cause of action arose. > > I would love commentary on how others deal with these issues. I'm soon > going to pitch a project to an organization that feels the portability > of the site is important in case the company goes out of business, for > instance. Even a pro bono client asked me about no.2. Portability is always good, but you don't need to tell them it will be difficult to find another host. We are out here, and I assume everyone on this list does hosting or knows of a host. Worst case, tell the customer they can easily call SMI for a reference. The more important issue should be cost of development, speed of development and feature availability. Good Luck! Matt Perosi Psi Prime, Inc. nj-singles.com ijo.com masterjeweler.com ------------------------------------------------------------- This message is sent to you because you are subscribed to the mailing list
. To unsubscribe, E-mail to: To switch to the DIGEST mode, E-mail to Web Archive of this list is at: http://webdna.smithmicro.com/
Associated Messages, from the most recent to the oldest:
> After having been my own client for 6 years, for the past year or so > I've been doing sites for others. In a few weeks I'm having a lawyer > put together my legalese, and would appreciate some guidelines and how > others address these issues, and if there's something else I need to > address. Aside from typical boilerplate stuff my attorney surely has > for other business clients, I want to clarify a couple of things: In 10 years of business I have found that customers TOTALLY HATE legalese contracts. The longer you make them the harder it will be to have them sign. My contracts used to be 12 pages long because my attorney was a nut! In recent years there has been a debate over "plane English" contracts and if they will hold up in court. I've been informed they will, so we rewrote our programming and hosting contract in understandable English. Most of the legalese has been omitted except for a few things that can't be avoided. It now only take a few hours for a customer to sign our contracts once we email them. We used to wait weeks for them to send the contract to their attorney for review. They never liked the attorney cost either. My customers range from very small to somewhat large, from all around the country, and they all react badly to legalese contracts. The general point of view has always been that they felt we were hiding something... after all we are "only" programming a web site. > > 1) that they don't own the code, I do; that they're only buying a > service that happens to present their information in a web browser, or > something to that affect. I have found that customers hate this idea. If they have a simple site without DBs it's one thing to give them their site but keep the email scripts. But we consider ourselves a web software developer. The customer pays us for our time to create scripts for them. Sometimes the scripts are used on several sites, and sometimes they are not. I've had more customers appreciate the time savings and the cost savings associated with reusing code from our previous projects. Nothing is ever perfect, so there is always a little time needed to tweak scripts. Having these "canned" scripts has allowed us to speed up our development process and also increase our rates. > > 3) that I have to host the site, and if they decide to take their > business elsewhere..., well, I really don't know how to address this > one, or if I even need to (see no. 1). We make them host with us as well. We tell them that they are free to leave, but they will need to host with another WebDNA provider to get there system to run. So yes, we would freely give them all our uncommented code and the next guy will have fun trying to figure it all out. > > 4) something about liability in case they try to blame the site for > their business failure, data loss, or some such BS. (on the sites > where I maintain a membership or other direct DB, I give them a link > to a tab-delimited text file of their data so they can make their own > data backups; also I backup the server nightly, albeit to a local HD, > so if the building goes up in smoke... well, I do mean to set up an > offsite Retrospect BU strategy before too long) Here: ACKNOWLEDGMENTS OF CUSTOMER: Customer hereby understands and acknowledges that: - Psi Prime is cannot guarantee that your competed web site will increase your business, or accomplish any goal expected. - We cannot guarantee your web site to appear in any search engine. Psi Prime follows search engine submission rules as published on Google.com. However, just because we follow those rules does not mean your web site will ever get listed or achieve top search engine ranking. Psi Prime will use it's best efforts to get your site listed according you your requests. - Psi Prime is not responsible if your web site is miscategorized in any search engine. - YOU will be responsible for the accuracy and adequacy of all information contained in YOUR web pages, as well as the liability imposed by any federal and state laws, including but not limited to copyright laws. Here: LIMITS OF LIABILITY: Psi Prime and it's suppliers' liability is limited to the amount paid for this service product. In no event shall Psi Prime or its suppliers be liable to any person or entity for incidental, consequential, indirect or special damages of any nature, including without limitation loss of business profits, income or data. Or this one: LIMITATION OF LIABILITY - Psi Prime's liability for any damages, losses and causes of actions shall not exceed the actual dollar amount paid by Customer for the Service which gave rise to such damages, losses and causes of actions during the 12-month period prior to the date the damage or loss occurred or the cause of action arose. > > I would love commentary on how others deal with these issues. I'm soon > going to pitch a project to an organization that feels the portability > of the site is important in case the company goes out of business, for > instance. Even a pro bono client asked me about no.2. Portability is always good, but you don't need to tell them it will be difficult to find another host. We are out here, and I assume everyone on this list does hosting or knows of a host. Worst case, tell the customer they can easily call SMI for a reference. The more important issue should be cost of development, speed of development and feature availability. Good Luck! Matt Perosi Psi Prime, Inc. nj-singles.com ijo.com masterjeweler.com ------------------------------------------------------------- This message is sent to you because you are subscribed to the mailing list . To unsubscribe, E-mail to: To switch to the DIGEST mode, E-mail to Web Archive of this list is at: http://webdna.smithmicro.com/
Matthew A Perosi
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