Who owns the code a company commissions?
Source code written to a company’s order belongs to that company — that is how it works with AI BF. This is not a given: with commissioned development, ownership depends on the contract, and with cloud services the customer usually never owns the code at all and pays for access to someone else’s.
What ownership covers in practice
“Ownership” is a common word in quotes and can mean many things. With AI BF it means that everything built on the platform for your company is your property — not just a handed-over file, but everything you need for the system to run without us.
- The source code of all applications built for your company.
- The databases with all their content and history.
- The content entered by your users, and attached documents.
- The settings and rules by which the applications work.
There is no licence restricting your use to a certain number of users, a certain period or a certain server. There is no clause tying the results of the work to us, and no part of the system that stays ours and has to be rented on.
Why this isn’t a given
In software there are three quite different situations, and in each of them the word “yours” means something different.
Cloud service
The customer never has the code. They pay for access to someone else’s software; when they stop paying, at best a data export remains.
Commissioned development
Ownership depends entirely on the contract. Without an explicit clause, the economic rights of authorship often remain with the developer, and the customer only gets a right of use.
Applications on AI BF
Ownership is part of the design, not an add-on to the quote. When you leave, you receive the source code and a full data export in a form anyone can take over.
What to read in the contract before commissioning development
This applies to any quote for custom development, even if it isn’t ours. Four questions tell you almost everything.
- Are the economic rights explicitly transferred to the customer? If it only says the customer has a “right of use”, the code isn’t theirs.
- What exactly is being transferred? The application code is one thing; the tools and libraries without which it can’t be run are another.
- May you modify the solution and have someone else modify it? Ownership without the right to adapt is, in practice, limited use.
- What do you get when the cooperation ends, and how quickly? An exit agreed in advance is something very different from negotiating when the relationship is already strained.
What remains ours
It’s only fair to describe the other side too. What is yours is the solution built for your company — applications, code, data and content. What remains ours is the general know-how and the way of working with which these solutions are created; we don’t sell it to you, and we couldn’t, because it isn’t tied to your case. The practical consequence for you is none: you can run, modify and move the system you commissioned without our involvement.
What this means if the developer is no longer around one day is described on the page What happens to an application if the developer goes out of business?
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