QQQ is wrong. His case would be stronger, if on residential jobs, the programming line item actually reflected the real price of the development of the code. It does not. As was pointed out above, macros take a very long time to develop and perfect.

It has been pointed out that anyone can code anything. In theory this is true but not all programmers can write all code. Read/write coding techniques are often beyond the abilities of most residential coders, and if you have code for a particular HVAC system that works ought you to see that code, uncompensated, move into the public domain. Knowing what to code is often as important as having the ability to code. I have a coding scheme that while not unique, is not what I have found in any other job by any other firm. Should my talent fall to a competitor for free?

Copyright is nonsense. As in any contract it's only as good as your ability to enforce it. You would have to know into whose hands its fallen and you'd have to have the financial ability to take on your client--a patently stupid idea in my experience every one of my clients has 10^100000 more money then I do.

The idea that we should discuss this up front sounds great but is also nonsense. I don't discuss many items at the first meeting. Why? Because I am suggesting so many strange ideas at a time they are dealing with an overwhelming number of decisions that they will go into overload. I do not go into a programming precis till the job is 3/4 or 90% complete; after the decisions on tile, furniture, flooring, cabinets, mill work, fixtures, plumbing, wall colors and such have long been made. The client knows what will be controlled, not how or to what extent. To bring up every negative so early in a relationship is to risk losing a job.

What every client is entitled to and ought to be given is a disc with all compiled code. If his processor fails he ought to be able to reload the program into his repaired or replaced processor. What is left unstated here, is that residential jobs fund the programming line item out of equipment sales, a paradigm more and more difficult to maintain in an era of declining or non-existing equipment margins. A perfect module for a complicated device can take 500 or more hours to make perfect. No client pays 62000 for that module. It is amortized, as has been written already, over every job. Even when you have to customize a macro it can take 10 hours and clients will balk at that. Just because you have a 25k programming line item does not mean you have paid for the time that code took to write.

There are escrow accounts software can be placed if a client is willing to pay for it. But residential clients don't want to pay for even this solution.

Alan