Fair is fair
One test, and every clause has to pass it.
Would this still be acceptable if the two sides swapped places? Where the answer is no, the clause is not in the agreement. The method is that one question, and it is the reason the two columns below are the same length.
| What protects you | What protects us |
|---|---|
| Your skill is yours forever. You keep working, teaching and competing. | What we build stays ours. You cannot take the finished article to somebody else and sell it. |
| Ending it is free. No penalty, no clawback, no fee for walking away. | The job you are running finishes. Nothing new starts under it after the day notice arrives. |
| You are told the truth about erasing, backups included, with the real completion date. | One clear record of what was agreed, so nobody argues later about what was said. |
| You see the count and what you are owed. | We pay on real, checked hours and not on an estimate. |
| Nothing goes anywhere without your yes. | No passing it on. Whoever licenses it cannot pass it to anybody else. |
| Nobody borrows your work quietly. A way of working taught on one owner's machine stays with that owner. | It runs only where it is licensed. Whoever licenses it runs it on the job it was licensed for, and nowhere else. |
| You are told what it can and cannot do, in the same words we use with the person paying for it. | What you record is real. You working the way you actually work, on the job you actually did, and not a performance for the recorder. |
Why it is written this way
A protection with no counterpart is a favour, and favours get taken back.
Every line on the left has a line on the right holding it up. That is deliberate. An arrangement where one side is simply being generous lasts exactly as long as the generosity does: until money is tight, or the people change, or somebody buys us.
An arrangement where both sides need the other's protection to keep their own is an arrangement that survives all three.
These are the points the agreements are being built around. Nobody signs anything before they are finished and on this site.