The same license, for every client.
Codestead publishes one client license and uses it on every project. You can read the whole thing before you ever contact us, which means the first meeting is about what we are building instead of what the paperwork says.
This version is with our attorney. It is published here so you can see the model we work under, but it is not yet offered in any agreement. The full operative text goes up when the legal review is finished.
Terms you can read before you need them.
A software contract usually arrives late. You have picked the vendor, agreed on a budget, and set a start date, and then the agreement shows up as the last obstacle between you and getting started. That is the worst possible moment to be reading carefully about who owns what.
Publishing the license moves that reading to the beginning, where it costs you nothing. It fixes something on our side too. Codestead is one person, and negotiating bespoke intellectual property terms with every client burns time neither of us is getting paid for. One published, versioned form leaves three things to actually discuss: the price, what is exclusively yours, and whether you want us restricted from building for anyone else.
The plain-English version.
Not the operative text. This summary is here to help you read the license, and where the two differ the numbered sections are what count.
When Codestead builds software for you, you receive the complete source code and a license to do essentially anything with it: run it anywhere, change it, hire anyone else to work on it, transfer it with your business — and once your license vests, even publish it. Codestead keeps ownership of the code and the freedom to reuse it — including for businesses that compete with you — except for the specific items listed in your agreement as yours alone, which become your property outright. Separately, your data and your confidential information may be used only to serve you, never for anyone else.
Your license becomes permanent ("vests") when the build is paid for — either full payment of the project fee or the milestone your agreement names if you pay over time. Until then, the one way you can lose it is failing to pay after written notice and a chance to catch up. Two narrow limits apply even after vesting: open-source components inside the software keep their own licenses, and the patent license ends if you sue claiming the software infringes your own patents.
This summary helps you read the license; the numbered sections below are the actual terms and control if they differ.
Four things, and one of them is uncomfortable.
You hold the code the whole time.
Repository access is an obligation we take on for the length of the engagement, not a handover at the end. We also owe you a source delivery at every milestone, whenever you ask in writing, and when the engagement ends. The single exception is work you have not paid for after a termination for nonpayment, which stays with us. A license to software you cannot get your hands on would not be worth much.
Once it is paid for, it is permanent.
Your license vests when the build is paid for, and from that moment nobody can revoke, suspend, or narrow it. Not a later dispute, not ending the engagement, not us going out of business. Before it vests, the only thing that can cost you the license is not paying after written notice and a chance to catch up, and money you are disputing in good faith does not count against you.
Change it, move it, sell it, publish it.
Run it anywhere for any purpose. Modify it. Hire any developer you want to work on it, including one who competes with us. Take it with you when you sell the business, without asking our permission. Once it has vested you can publish the whole thing publicly. You never owe us a royalty, and after vesting any unpaid invoice is a debt we collect like a debt, never a reason to switch anything off.
We reuse our own work, including for your competitors.
We keep the copyright and stay free to build similar software for anyone. That is the part most firms leave for you to discover later, so we put it in bold in the license and on our home page. If you need it restricted, we price that as a rider rather than pretending it does not happen. Your data and anything confidential you tell us are a separate matter entirely: those only ever serve your project, and that includes not rebuilding them in disguised form for someone else.
What changes from one client to the next.
Three things. Everything else in the license is identical for everyone, which is what makes publishing it possible.
Price and scope
What we are building and what it costs. This is the real conversation, and it is the one the published license exists to protect.
What is exclusively yours
Some components should belong to you alone, usually whatever encodes something specific about how you compete. Those get listed by name in a schedule and become your property outright when your license vests. It has to be a list of named components rather than a category, because a category is something two people can read two different ways.
Restricting what we build next
If you want us committed to staying away from named competitors, or out of a defined market for a defined period, that is a rider with a price on it. It is rare, and it costs real money, because it is us agreeing to turn down work.
Your version never changes.
Your agreement names the version it incorporates, for example CCL v0.3. If we publish a new one next year, yours is untouched. We cannot amend your terms by posting a page. Moving an existing agreement onto a newer version takes a signature from both of us, the same as any other change.
| Version | Status | Full text |
|---|---|---|
| v0.3 | Preview | Published after legal review |
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