If your company has made the decision to utilize Free & Open Source Software (FOSS) for some or all of your company’s application development needs, then your legal department is probably well-versed in the following topics. If not, the following will act as quick overview and explanation of general FOSS language and the SitePen development approach.
In general, FOSS is software that is licensed on a non-exclusive and non-discriminatory basis, with mandatory access to computer program source code, and with the right for you to make and distribute derivative works. With FOSS, the word "free" generally means "without restriction" (or with minimal restrictions), but often also means "free of charge."
SitePen’s development efforts leverage the Dojo Toolkit and other FOSS. Many companies have recognized the benefits of adopting FOSS compared to proprietary software such as reduced development and maintenance costs along with higher reliability.
It is one of the simplest, shortest, least restrictive, and business-friendly FOSS licenses. For details, see the BSD license description by the Open Source Initiative.
That depends. SitePen provides several professional services in combination with your company’s use of the Dojo Toolkit. Here’s a breakdown of our client services and the benefits to your organization.
Service: SitePen employs its development expertise to identify and fix performance bottlenecks within your application and can provide insightful approaches to best development practices, scalability, and quality user experience.
Deliverable: Information, recommendations, suggestions and advice related to improving your application, performance reports, and useful tools for testing application source code.
IP Ownership: If SitePen provides fixes or modifications to the Dojo Toolkit when addressing performance optimization reviews, SitePen contributes all modifications to the Dojo Toolkit codebase directly to the Dojo Foundation. If SitePen provides a recommended fix to your own Application source code, that IP is retained by you. Further, SitePen may make use of its own internal extensions to Dojo or testing tools and while the IP is not transferred to you in this case, SitePen provides a full license to you for wide usage of all these types of deliverables. SitePen retains IP for general performance issues and improvement techniques that are not specific to the features of your application.
IP Indemnity: SitePen provides an indemnity on all application source code IP that is delivered to you. There is no indemnity provided on any deliverable where the IP ownership is not transferred.
Service: SitePen provides assistance with designing, developing, and testing your application.
Deliverable: Source code for your application and/or patches to improve the Dojo Toolkit.
IP Ownership: If SitePen provides fixes and/or modifications to the Dojo Toolkit as part of your development project, SitePen will contribute these to the Dojo Toolkit codebase and directly to the Dojo Foundation. If SitePen is developing source code to your specification for your application, that IP is retained by you. Further, SitePen may make use of its own internal extensions to Dojo or testing tools and while the IP is not transferred to you in this case, SitePen provides a license to you for wide usage of all these types of deliverables.
IP Indemnity: SitePen will provide you with an IP indemnity for all application source code that we develop for you. However, if there is FOSS such as the Dojo Toolkit embedded within our original application code, there is no indemnity provided by SitePen on the FOSS code.
Service: SitePen provides a variety of Dojo Training Workshops for the betterment of development teams everywhere.
Deliverables: Onsite presentations by seasoned Dojo committers and instructional and reference materials for later use.
IP Ownership: SitePen retains the IP to all training workshop deliverables but provides a license to you for usage of all deliverables.
IP Indemnity: No indemnity is provided on SitePen Training Workshops.
Service: SitePen Support provides a venue for your web developers to obtain information on best practices, ask questions and get answers about the Dojo Toolkit. It also provides a support mechanism for solving performance issues, fixing bugs in Dojo, fixing bugs with your Dojo code or providing general advice on web application development.
Deliverables: Information, answers, advice, code fixes to Dojo, code fixes to code in client application.
IP Ownership: If SitePen provides fixes and/or modifications to the Dojo Toolkit as part of your development project, SitePen will contribute these to the Dojo Toolkit codebase directly to the Dojo Foundation. If SitePen is developing source code to your specification for your application, that IP is retained by you. Further, SitePen may make use of its own internal extensions to Dojo or testing tools and while the IP is not transferred to you in this case, SitePen provides a license to you for wide usage of all these types of deliverables.
IP Indemnity: SitePen will not provide an indemnity on any IP under its Support Terms of Service. This is for two reasons which include 1) We are supporting your use of Dojo which is FOSS and we don’t provide any indemnity for any FOSS work and 2) we’re fixing your code according to your specifications so, we’re not providing any IP to you, we’re just giving you suggestions on how to make your existing code work and/or work better.
Because FOSS is produced and maintained by a widespread community outside the boundaries of any single company and is typically distributed for free, such software does not include indemnification for intellectual property (IP) issues.
Companies, including SitePen clients, identify and obtain their FOSS licenses directly from the relevant open source project, with whatever IP coverage that open source project provides. SitePen provides certain limited IP indemnification for SitePen’s work product, but follows the typical practice and does not offer IP indemnification for FOSS. SitePen’s IP indemnification also does not cover combinations, modifications, specifications or requirements requested by its clients.
As with IP indemnification, FOSS typically comes with no performance representation or warranty. Instead, SitePen offers a Quality Assurance (QA) phase in each project, which is subject to your acceptance. SitePen has found this alternative to be more practical and responsive to our clients’ true concerns with application performance.
Another benefit of the SitePen development approach is that SitePen actively participates in the open source community.
Your reputation in the open source community is improved by "giving back" to the community, and reduces total cost of ownership for ongoing maintenance and support. For this reason, in all of its open source development, SitePen reserves the ability to contribute certain improvements and modifications back to the relevant FOSS project. SitePen performs the other new development work on a work-for-hire basis for the client; in other words, you own that portion of SitePen’s new development and you will license the remaining, underlying open source code of the Dojo Toolkit itself directly from the Dojo Foundation.
This document is intended as a simplified business explanation of several terms and conditions of SitePen’s Professional Services Agreement but does not supplement or modify those terms and conditions. The Professional Services Agreement is the definitive statement of those terms and conditions.