[foundation-board] Iconomical Situation

[Rufus Pollock]

On 3 February 2011 15:40, Becky Hogge <becky.hogge at gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks for this report Rufus.
>
> Is there any written agreement between OKFN and Iconomical or was all
> work carried out on a good faith / verbal agreement basis?

We had some agreements in email but nothing very formal (they kept
proposing to deliver a spec and then never delivered a satisfactory
one).

The key aspect of the email agreements was to pay them €500 / day for
50 days of work with them delivering giving us a license to all that
material (there is an original clause about IP rights that stopped
short of full open-sourcing as that was to be resolved). However
they've never regularly reported days and I think they are aware they
don't have lacking a "good" contract from their end.

> More inline...
>
> On 3 February 2011 11:10, Rufus Pollock <rufus.pollock at okfn.org> wrote:
>>
>> While I believe we *should* pay Iconomical for their work there are 2
>> fundamental questions:
>>
>> 1. Do we pay before code is fixed and checked (re usuability by third
>> parties -- I'm afraid of an dump it over the wall setup here)
>
> Is there any scope for OKFN to make a payment of half of monies owed
> with second half being paid pending analysis of the source code once
> it is delivered?

That's a possibility.

>> 2. Should there be deductions for the costs in delay (need to rewrite
>> going forward) caused by Iconomical's behaviour
>
> My hunch is that in the absence of a specific contract allowing us to
> do this, getting compensated for their delays is going to be a tough
> ask. Although it seems unfair given how badly it sounds like they
> behaved, the most sensible thing to do may be to cut our losses
> (depending on how big those losses are - see question below) and move
> on. This is just my tuppence worth, I'd like to hear from others with
> more experience in contracting services.

I largely agree. I'd like this just to be over at this point. At the
same time I'm pretty annoyed, especially at the delays that have meant
we haven't had code to share with the community.

> One final question - how has this, and how do you predict this will,
> affect the overall project budget?

They are budgeted in and we have some surplus so we can move forward.
I think it may just be best to pay them and as you say 'move on' (and
*never, ever* work with them again!).

Rufus

>> _______________________________________________
>> foundation-board mailing list
>> foundation-board at lists.okfn.org
>> http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-board
>>
>



-- 
Co-Founder, Open Knowledge Foundation
Promoting Open Knowledge in a Digital Age
http://www.okfn.org/ - http://blog.okfn.org/