Is this normal? Intermediate client is not willing to provide license terms and not willing that I appear as the author

Question

An intermediate client (say software agency) requested me to develop a plugin for a popular system. She is selling this to the final client.

Full story is here in this other question: Can I publish a GPL source I'm being paid for to develop?

I am acting as a freelance, not an employee.

The popular system is GPL-3 and the plugin exchanges a significant amount of structured data with the host system. So I guess my work must necessarily be GPL-3 too (or a compatible one). But for sure -I guess- it can't be delivered without licensing terms.

Problems

• The intermediate client is requesting me to deliver without adding the GPL license terms and without mentioning GPL3 at all. She says: "The client will decide the license". But I ask "tell me what license, and I'll check if compatible and I'll place the terms" and the client says "you don't need to know".

• The intermediate client is requesting me to remove any mention to "me as the author". She says: "If they need any modification, they already know how to reach me".

• The intermediate client is "telling me" that the "final client" (the payer) is who will hold the copyright, but she is not willing to tell me who the copyright owner is for me to add this info in the license terms. She says: "Just give me your source code and they'll add their name by their own".

The combination of all seems quite "scammy" to me. Doesn't it?

But this is my first time I'm "selling my time" for doing OpenSource and IDK if this is normal in the sector or not.

I guess his fear is that the final client comes directly to me for next works. But hey, this is why the open source licenses are so transparent, no? I would be open to sign a declaration with the intermediate that for X time I won't sell to this particular client directly.

Questions

• Is all this normal?
• What should I tell to the intermediate client?
• Is it normal that the plugin is delivered without license?
• May I "enforce" that my claim of "me being the author" is not removed? Or the intermediate has the right to eliminate the authorship information?
• Is it normal to deliver without specifying who is the copyright owner?

Please help!

Answer 1

For nearly all issues of work done under contract, as we've already said, the details depend entirely on what's in the contract. In terms of normal behaviour, the answers to your questions are yes, up to you, yes, no, no (but the owner won't be you). The usual path, unless you hold out for a contract that specifies otherwise, is that you're being paid to give both work and copyright to the entity who's paying for it. In some countries there may be a wrinkle with moral rights, but apart from that, you have no interest in or rights to the work once it's handed over and payment is made.

The interesting departure here is that you're being paid to create a plugin for a third-party GPLv3 work. The FSF's view is that the degree of integration between plugin and main work determine whether the plugin is a derivative work of the main program, and thus must be conveyed under GPL. You note in the question that this integration is tight. In any case, if it's loose, the GPL doesn't complicate matters, and we're back to the paragraph above. So let's assume that integration is tight, and that the plugin will be a derivative work.

GPLv3 has language to address this:

You may convey covered works to others for the sole purpose of having them make modifications exclusively for you, or provide you with facilities for running those works, provided that you comply with the terms of this License in conveying all material for which you do not control copyright. Those thus making or running the covered works for you must do so exclusively on your behalf, under your direction and control, on terms that prohibit them from making any copies of your copyrighted material outside their relationship with you.

I confess I'm not entirely sure how to read this, but a gentleman from Intel's Open Source technology centre said this about it in the early days of GPLv3, when we were all trying to understand it:

the intent here in GPLv3 is clear enough that use of contractors or outsourced hosting providers does not constitute conveyance (distribution in GPLv2 nomenclature).

By his reading, then, your client is allowed to give you a copy of the original GPLv3 program, with full sources, and pay you to develop and sign over to them a plugin for the work, on normal commercially-confidential work-for-hire terms. Nothing in GPLv3 obliges them to give you credit or recognition of any kind, and since they own the copyright, it should be their name, not yours, that appears on any sources they later choose, or are required, to publish.

You add in a comment that "I don't mind giving them the copyright. But I want to preserve the credentials of authorship when the source code spreads.". It seems to me that you are trying to reinvent moral rights. I think that's pointless; either you're in a civil law jurisdiction that recognises them as inalienable, in which case you need do nothing, or you're not, in which case you will find it difficult to reinvent them.

As we said earlier, make sure that what you want is in the contract. If you care about credit, add a term that says you will retain copyright, but that they have unlimited rights to use, reuse, copy, distribute, and relicense your work. They are likely to resist signing this, and you may have to agree to lower your fee - but if this is important to you, you should do that. What you shouldn't do is fail to negotiate for it now, then try to weasel it round the back after the work is done.