A fork of the popular open-source contract for web designers and developers by Stuff & Nonsense, reworded for developers
- Originally published: 05/02/2014
- Original post
Between us [company name] and you [customer name]
We’ll always do our best to fulfil your needs and meet your expectations, but it’s important to have things written down so that we both know what’s what, who should do what and when, and what will happen if something goes wrong. In this contract you won’t find any complicated legal terms or long passages of unreadable text. We’ve no desire to trick you into signing something that you might later regret. What we do want is what’s best for both parties, now and in the future.
So in short;
You ([customer name]), located at [customer address] are hiring us ([company name]) located at [company address] to develop software [enter brief details of the project] [ for the estimated total price of [total] / at a daily/weekly rate of [rate] ] as outlined in our previous correspondence. Of course it’s a little more complicated, but we’ll get to that.
You: You have the authority to enter into this contract on behalf of yourself, your company or your organisation. You’ll give us everything we need to complete the project as and when and in the format we need it. You’ll review our work, provide feedback and approval in a timely manner too. Deadlines work two ways, so you’ll also be bound by dates we set together. You also agree to stick to the payment schedule set out at the end of this contract.
Us: We have the experience and ability to do everything we’ve agreed with you and we’ll do it all in a professional and timely manner. We’ll endeavour to meet every deadline that’s set and on top of that we'll maintain the confidentiality of everything you give us.
Before we start work it's very important to know in detail what you want delivered. We will develop software that fulfils the requirements in the specification agreed with you. If those requirements are found to be ambiguous or over-ambitious in any way we'll make reasonable efforts to clarify what you want us to do.
You’ll have plenty of opportunities to review our work and provide feedback. We may use static visuals to indicate the direction of development so you know how things are going to look before they are built. We may also provide prototypes or previews of the software so you can try out aspects of it while development is still ongoing.
If, at any stage, you’re not happy with the direction our work is taking, you’ll pay us in full for everything we’ve produced until that point and cancel this contract.
Unless you have specific technical requirements in your specification we'll make the decisions about what technologies to use to build the software. Of course we're happy to discuss this with you so you know why we make those decisions. Rest assured we'll pick technologies which can be recognised and understood by other developers, so you're not being locked into anything.
It's common practice in software development to incorporate resources provided by third parties. These might include software libraries and frameworks, snippets of code or other resources such as icons. We'll keep a list of all 3rd party resources we use for your project, along with the details of the licence they are under and the original source.
Most of the time the resources categorised as "Open Source" are free to use. If there is a cost associated with using any resources we'll pass that cost along to you where appropriate, and we'll also notify you if the terms of any licences may cause a problem for your project.
We deliver web page types developed from HTML5 markup, CSS2.1 + 3 stylesheets for styling and unobtrusive JavaScript for feature detection, poly-fills and behaviours.
Browser testing no longer means attempting to make a website look the same in browsers of different capabilities or on devices with different size screens. It does mean ensuring that a person’s experience of a design should be appropriate to the capabilities of a browser or device.
We test our work in current versions of major desktop browsers including those made by Microsoft (Internet Explorer), Apple (Safari), Google (Chrome), Mozilla Firefox and Opera. We’ll ensure users get an appropriate experience, although that experience may be different across different browsers. We’ll implement a single column design for versions of Internet Explorer prior to version 9 and we won’t test in other older browsers unless you specify otherwise. If you need an enhanced design for an older browser, we can provide a separate estimate for that.
Testing popular small-screen devices is essential in ensuring that a person’s experience of a design is appropriate to the capabilities of the device they’re using. We test our work in:
- iOS: Safari, Google Chrome
- Android 4.x: Google Chrome and Firefox
We currently don’t test Blackberry, Opera Mini/Mobile, Windows Phone or other mobile browsers. If you need us to test using these, we can provide a separate estimate for that.
We’re not a website hosting company so we don’t offer support for website hosting, email or other services relating to hosting. You may already have professional hosting and you might even manage that hosting in-house; if you do, great. If you don’t, we can set up an account for you at one of our preferred hosting providers. We can set up your site on a server, plus any statistics software such as Google Analytics and we can provide a separate estimate for that. Then, the updates to, and management of that server will be up to you.
We know from experience that fixed-price contracts are rarely beneficial to you, as they often limit you to your earliest ideas. We don’t want to limit your ability to change your mind. The price at the beginning of this contract is based on the length of time we estimate we’ll need to accomplish everything you’ve told us you want to achieve, but we’re happy to be flexible. If you want to change your mind or add anything new, that won’t be a problem as we’ll provide a separate estimate for that.
We can’t guarantee that our work will be error-free and so we can’t be liable to you or any third-party for damages, including lost profits, lost savings or other incidental, consequential or special damages, even if you’ve advised us of them. Finally, if any provision of this contract shall be unlawful, void, or for any reason unenforceable, then that provision shall be deemed severable from this contract and shall not affect the validity and enforceability of any remaining provisions.
Phew.
First, you guarantee that all elements of text, images or other artwork you provide are either owned by your good selves, or that you’ve permission to use them.
Then, when your final payment has cleared, copyright will be automatically assigned as follows:
You’ll own the visual elements that we create for this project. We’ll give you source files and finished files and you should keep them somewhere safe as we’re not required to keep a copy. You own all elements of text, images and data you provided, unless someone else owns them.
We’ll own the unique combination of these elements that constitutes a complete design and we’ll license its use to you, exclusively and in perpetuity for this project only, unless we agree otherwise.
We love to show off our work and share what we’ve learned with other people, so we reserve the right, with your permission, to display and link to your project as part of our portfolio and to write about it on websites, in magazine articles and in books.
We’re sure you understand how important it is as a small business that you pay the invoices that we send you promptly. As we’re also sure you’ll want to stay friends, you agree to stick tight to the following payment schedule.
[Payment schedule]
Just like a parking ticket, you can’t transfer this contract to anyone else without our permission. This contract stays in place and need not be renewed. If for some reason one part of this contract becomes invalid or unenforceable, the remaining parts of it remain in place.
Although the language is simple, the intentions are serious and this contract is a legal document under exclusive jurisdiction of [English and Welsh] courts.
Oh and don’t forget those men with big dogs.
Signed by and on behalf of [company name] Signed by and on behalf of [customer name] Date [date]
Everyone should sign above and keep a copy for their records