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Ask HN: How to License My Program

4 points by asteroidb612 ↗ HN
I have spent the last few months working on a program for a friend of mine who is an investment banker. His company uses an online service to track deals and allegedly provide meaningful statistics back for them, however the system does not correctly combine the data in a way useful to them. My program gets the raw data and combines it into what they would like to know. He mentioned recently that he knows many other people in their same situation that would benefit from my program, and encouraged me see if I can make any more money off of it. Knowing little about the business side of programming, my questions are: 1) Should I license my program in order to protect myself? 2) What license should I use? (There is no disagreement on ownership, as my friend recognizes the work as my intellectual property (Should I get this in writing? (I wonder if this guy knows lisp...))) Thank you for any advice or wisdom you can give.

2 comments

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dmckeon
Who owns the IP of the program? (you, your friend, his employer?) Does the program contain anyone else's IP? Do you have a business model to extract revenue from your program? Have you considered selling a service rather than a license - something more like a newsletter or other subscription-based process?
asteroidb612
The IP is mine, as all of the code has been written by myself or is available under the MIT License. My friend is the owner of the company, does not claim the IP at all.

The nature of the program is that it is useful in that given a period of time, it can tell the user various statistics of their dealings. Target users would want to be able to generate this data at will, and so I don't think a subscription service would be useful.