[bobwaycott]

Do you have something in your terms that IP of all submitted PRs are only transferred and the work is only usable by clients upon completion of payment? If not, you should. Developers need to be protected from clients who might think it’s okay to take their work and not pay. This has been a standard clause of all my contracts as a consultant for the last 6 years. I wouldn’t do a project without it.

EDIT: Additionally, do you do anything that checks if a client refuses a PR, but then the code from the PR finds its way into the codebase by some other means? Seems that's another vector worth protecting developers from having their work used without payment.

[townsendeb13]

Escrow for a contract is optional. You and your client can agree on an amount that will be held on escrow and, upon a completed pull request, a portion of the escrow amount will be paid out. We're making some UI updates soon to make this more clear.

[trapfitech]

Great point. You would actually use your standard contract with clients as you do now so your clause would still be active. We have a dispute process in place now if a client steals code without paying for it, it ultimately triggers an investigation and can impact client's reputation within our system.

[eropple]

As a consultant, failure-to-pay is always on my mind--I'm sure you guys have seen it too. Why should a client care about their reputation within your system? If they're burning a developer, they can burn you too just as easily.

I would be much more likely to use your service, instead of just an Excel invoice or whatever (it's really just not that difficult to do once you've done it once, IMO) if I got something concrete for doing it. "Reputation", as we have all seen from Amazon's marketplace and from eBay and the rest, just doesn't mean all that much. It seems logical for this service to provide escrow, or at least partner with someone who does.

[nigelg]

> it ultimately triggers an investigation and can impact client's reputation within our system

TrapFi will notify all future developers that the client has acted unethically in the past, before you agree to work with them. Truthfully, we have not yet encountered an issue with a client stealing code.

We hear your concerns and see that this is a priority for the community, so we'll work on a more robust solution.

[brwsr]

first

> It's money you've earned, delivered instantly.

second

> it ultimately triggers an investigation and can impact client's reputation within our system

Hmm, this is confusing. Is bad reputation in your system the only penalty for an employer not paying? And that's it?

[sametmax]

Isn't failure to pay just stealing, and therefor already covered by existing law without needing to be written in the contract ?