Who owns your code and your data?

Ask that question before you start with a developer, even if that developer is me. With me the answer is short: the code and the data belong to the customer. Elsewhere it may be arranged differently, and that can be fine as long as you know beforehand.

Paying for code and owning it

Code falls under copyright, like a book or a photo. The rights in principle sit with whoever writes the code. If you have a freelancer build something, the copyright may stay with that freelancer, even if you have paid every invoice, unless a contract says otherwise. With employees it is often different. The rules depend on the country and the situation, so have a lawyer look at it.

A contract can settle this in two ways. With an assignment, the rights pass to you. With a licence, they stay with the maker and you get permission to use the code under certain conditions. Either can fit. In any case, ask whether someone else may change the code, and whether you may take it with you if you sell your business.

Software also contains building blocks nobody wrote specially for you, like open source libraries: freely available code with a licence of its own. You do not become the owner of those, and you do not need to. A developer may also reuse building blocks of their own that sit in several projects. Ask what you may keep using of those.

What happens to your data

Data is the information that ends up in your software, like customers and orders. Legally, ownership is less clear here than with code, so the practical questions help more. Can you get all your data at any moment, in an ordinary format other software can read? Who makes backups, meaning spare copies, and where are they kept? Who has access?

If it concerns customer data, then under the GDPR, the European privacy law, you usually remain responsible yourself, even if someone else manages the software. There is more on that in What can AI do in a small business today? The same questions apply to an existing tool that you rent.

The accounts to check

Code and data live somewhere, and those places belong to an account. For each account, check whose name it is in and who the administrator is.

• Domain: the address of your site or app, like yourbusiness.be. It is registered in someone’s name with a company that manages domains, a registrar. Whoever manages the registration decides where the address points.
• Hosting: the service your software runs on. Check who can log in and who gets the bill, because those are not always the same people.
• Code repository: the online place where the code and its history are kept, for example on GitHub. Without access to it, you do not have the code itself.
• App store accounts: the Apple Developer Program and the Google Play Console. Your app appears under the name of that account. For a business account, Apple and Google currently ask for a D-U-N-S number, an international company number, so start on that in good time. You can usually move an app to another account, though that takes extra steps. These rules change, so check them with Apple and Google.

The same question applies to other services your software uses, such as those for email or payments.

Look too at the email address and phone number you can recover an account with. If those are in the developer’s name, every password reset runs through that person. A general address of your business, like info@, avoids that.

For someone else to carry on with it, you need documentation as well as access. Ask for it: how do you start the software, where are the settings, and which other services does it depend on?

How it works with me

The code and the data belong to the customer, and on this site I only ever show the result. Hosting, the domain and app store accounts can be in your name. I can also do the hosting for you.

If you want to carry on with someone else one day, I hand over the code with documentation the next developer can really use. You should never feel locked in to me. That handover is also a step in my process.

If your project is already running

You can ask these questions while building is under way too. Go through the accounts, ask for access where you do not have it yet, and ask how the rights to the code are arranged. If you would like that on paper, a lawyer can help you with the right wording.

If a new collaboration is coming up, you will find more questions in Questions to ask before you sign. If your developer can no longer be reached, read Your developer disappeared. What now?