Can they legally do this...:-(

Hi this is my first forum post

I have just started working for a UK company and have decided to make changes to their commerce website that will improve our user experience.

I don't know the UK law for this but we have a website which we have hosted (we own the machine and the domain name) it runs on IIS and i can dial into it at any time.

We currently use a company who design our commerce site and support our back office system. the trouble is they take ages to complete jobs and I feel they have been ripping us off

I want to use a third party to make some changes to the page code. The third part will not need access to the database, just the asp page code.

I have been told by the company director that we are not allowed to change the source code. However I feel he is saying this as he doesn't want to loose out on the work.

My question is what is the legality of the situation? are we legally allowed to change the source code?

While I'm no expert in UK law, the similarities between UK and US law are plenty, so hopefully this answer will help you. You need to check your license agreement/contract with the company that you use for your website. If that agreement says that you cannot change the source code, then legally, you cannot. This is definitely the case with many contracts because they DO want repeat business which is completely legal. If you bought their product and services and you agreed to their terms, then you are bound by them.

If it's too much of a hassle getting changes done (does your agreement mention anything about changes?), then start searching for a new company to provide those services.

I'm no expert either on law, but I've ran into similar problems. As I've understood it, if your company doesn't own the copyright to the code, then I guess they can force these kind of restrictions.

Think of the situation in another perspective. What if you have made an application for a customer and you are responsible for making sure it works the way it is intended to. Would you allow a third party you know nothing about to go mess around with your code and possibly messing up something? If something goes wrong, who is it to blame, who takes the responsibility?

Thanks for the replies

I understand where they are coming from, but just feel we are being taken for a ride.

The design company are often quite rude and also seem to forget we are the customer. The other downside is the fact they seem behind on web technologies, and our competition seem to overtake

I will have to check the contract. The trouble is the back office is so integrated into our business the MD will not want to change, the effect of changing the back office would be a major task

It all depends on what was in the contract as people have duly noted. If it's not in there then the author generally owns it however ...

... you should check out the bit in copyright law regarding Work For Hire. Source code I write at work belongs to my employer, not me. Under circumstances that can be construed as an employer/employee relation the employer owns it. This seems clearly a case of a contractor, however, so we're back to what the contract says.

You may have to look into getting a new person or company to produce something new for you, a case of cutting your losses perhaps?