{"id":748,"date":"2011-09-18T10:55:30","date_gmt":"2011-09-18T16:55:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/?p=748"},"modified":"2011-09-18T10:55:30","modified_gmt":"2011-09-18T16:55:30","slug":"source-code-escrow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/archives\/748","title":{"rendered":"Source Code Escrow"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Have you ever considered asking a software vendor to put their <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Source_code_escrow\">source code in escrow<\/a>? I recently broached the topic with a vendor I was evaluating. They didn&#8217;t seem too happy about the topic (at first, they were a bit sarcastic [&#8220;does Oracle do software escrow?&#8221;] and then they deleted tech support forum post). I did a bit of research, and there doesn&#8217;t seem to be a clear consensus on software escrow. Here are two interesting articles: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cio.com\/article\/187450\/Source_Code_Escrow_Are_You_Just_Following_the_Herd_\">Are you just following the herd?<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.barefootsolutions.com\/blog\/resources\/source-code-escrow\">Source Code Escrow<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Just having started thinking about the topic, my thoughts are still up in the air, but here&#8217;s my first reaction. Source code escrow makes sense when the following conditions are met:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The software is not open source (duh)<\/li>\n<li>The software is or will be crucial to your business<\/li>\n<li>The company is small or the future of the company is up in the air<\/li>\n<li>You (the purchaser) have the technical capabilities to support the software should you receive it, or you&#8217;re willing to invest in those who can<\/li>\n<li>You are willing to pay more for source that will be escrowed<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I think of source code escrow like a warrenty on a car, or a professional license of open source software (like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.redhat.com\/\">RedHat<\/a> or <a href=\"http:\/\/www.alfresco.com\/\">Alfresco<\/a>). It&#8217;s not for everyone (a car mechanic isn&#8217;t going to buy the warrenty) but it&#8217;s a nice option to have. And, to stretch a metaphor, if you&#8217;re going to soup up your car and build a livelihood on it, it&#8217;s nice to have a warrenty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Have you ever considered asking a software vendor to put their source code in escrow? I recently broached the topic with a vendor I was evaluating. They didn&#8217;t seem too [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=748"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":750,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748\/revisions\/750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}