CDNs should pay eyeball networks, too.

Tue May 1 21:13:01 UTC 2012

"If one of the customers happens to be the U.S. Government, it's not
only unethical it's a crime. It's usually a felony. You can do time.
The product was man hours. You've sold them once. You can't sell them
again."
You're assuming the contract is simply for work hours.  Generally
speaking, and from my experience, it isn't.  The contract is for an
app that does X, not 20 hours toward building an app that does X.

"But you *may not* tie your
price to the hours used to produce it for the first."
Sure you can.  How else do you determine what the software's going to
cost if you're not going to factor in development?

On Tue, May 1, 2012 at 2:06 PM, William Herrin <bill at herrin.us> wrote:
> On 5/1/12, Mike Hale <eyeronic.design at gmail.com> wrote:
>> "A customer pays you to build a piece of software by the hour. Another
>> comes along and asks for the same software. You bill both for each
>> hour. Double billing. Unethical. Wrong.
>> [...]
>> Neither of these is unethical or wrong in any way.  What are you
>> supposed to do, write software from scratch every time? That's just
>> silly.
>
> Hi Mike,
>
> If one of the customers happens to be the U.S. Government, it's not
> only unethical it's a crime. It's usually a felony. You can do time.
> The product was man hours. You've sold them once. You can't sell them
> again.
>
> The customers can agree to share the cost up front. But then you're
> not billing the same hours twice, you're billing half an hour to one
> customer and half to another. When you finish the software you can
> sell the software to a second customer. But you *may not* tie your
> price to the hours used to produce it for the first.
>
> Regards,
> Bill Herrin
>
>
>
> --
> William D. Herrin ................ herrin at dirtside.com  bill at herrin.us
> 3005 Crane Dr. ...................... Web: <http://bill.herrin.us/>
> Falls Church, VA 22042-3004

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