Hello,
My question regards web source code / file ownership. Please bear with my preface:

A company I work with has asked me to analyze their website from scratch. The group that created their website also is their web-host. This company charges a large annual fee for just hosting the website. I have gone over the contract that the company I work with signed from the web-hosting company. I have also personally talked with the web-host to further clarify and confirm what the contract states.
The contract states that the company I work with owns the HTML files, and the data in the SQL databases. However, they do not own the ASP files nor do they have rights to the SQL database structures—those are owned by the webhost/development company and they are claiming the ASP files (which are simply plain text vb script that sometimes interact with a small SQL database) are their intellectual property and the company does not have any rights to them.
This leaves the company with two options, remain with their current host, or move to another web-host and rebuild the website almost from scratch.

My questions are simple. Is this a common business practice for web development companies to prohibit their clients or (claim intellectual property rights) from using anything on the clients own website or is this simply an unscrupulous web-host/development company?
Do the details of this contract sound strange or abnormal at all?
If the company were to have another site designed, would there be a good chance of the new development company wanting to own the code in the same way the current web-host is?

Thanks!

There are 10 types of people, those who know binary, and those who don't.

*Practices

There are 10 types of people, those who know binary, and those who don't.

Common? I'll say no.

But I do know that there're some developers who keep the copyright of their works to themselves. Customers are paying rent for the developer's work.

It all depends on the contract.

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It's uncommon for custom websites, but it might be common if the website in question is using some kind of reusable application, and the developer is selling (websites created by) the apps to other companies.

Tell us the website address?

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Fubar

Laler beat me to it.

I worked for a company that hosted a particular web "application" for many, many different clients. Any flat HTML files and the data created by their site would be theirs. But, to hand over the source file and the database structure would be like giving a user the source code for Windows because they bought a license for the OS. However, this would not be standard practice for a company that paid a provider to build them a site from scratch.

But, from previous experience most clients "assumed" they were getting a custom site and did not realize that their "custom" site was really run from a common back-end framework. In fact what they were getting was a core application that was given a "skin" to look how they wanted with the products and services they wanted.

Michael J

The site was custom designed for the company.
I understand the comparison between OS licensing and full source ownership, however, I think your analogy is comparing apples to oranges for this reason: the company I work with paid them (like $20k) to develop this site. I looked at the .asp files on the webserver, they are customized for us written in vb script. Seems we should have as much right to at least the .asp files as we do the .html files. I can understand a little bit more the SQL structures, but still...
They offered to export all the data in the SQL databases to MS Access...Im not sure how easy that would be to reimport into another SQL database. Perhaps someone could answer that question for me too.
I really doubt the webhosts source is the same for all the sites they develop.
This all just seems a little shady to me.

Thanks!

There are 10 types of people, those who know binary, and those who don't.

Well, I think my anology was spot on. A web applicatin licensed to a company is no different than licensing a windows app. But, that's not relevant to the discussion.

It is really difficult to know if the company was being shady or not. As I stated most of our clients thought they were getting a "custom" site, but it was really based upon our application. In some cases, we did have clients who wanted a custom site based upon our core application. They paid a lot more, but they would still not own the code.

It is impossible from the information provided to determine if the vendor was doing something shady or not. In any event your customer signed the contrat, so it doesn't matter what anyone thinks.

As for being able to re-import an access database into a SQL database would be fairly simple. But, I highly doubt that the output you receive will have the same structure as the original database. it will most likely be in a report type format.

So, if you did go with another vendor to recreate the site, they would have to design a database format from scratch.

Michael J