For documenting what's in a project, I use Rick Schummer's excellent Project Lister. It hasn't been updated in a while, but it does a fine job and is available for free (I think) from http://whitelightcomputing.com/prodprojectlister.htm.

In the U.S., the intermediary for holding source code would typically be an escrow company that specializes in escrowing software. You and your customer enter into a legal agreement with the escrow company covering the terms under which you must deposit the source code and under which they are allowed to release the source code to the customer. There is usually a fee for this service, and it may not be inexpensive - several hundred dollars at least. Also, your customer may require you or the escrow company to prove that your source code submission is complete and can be used to compile the application in executable form from the source code you've submitted. This is a service the escrow company might offer, again for a fee.

Escrowing source code can lead to issues when you use 3rd party products in your application, products for which you may have a license to deploy in object code form as part of your compiled application, but for which you do not have a license to distribute source code. I am not an attorney, but IMO that type of license does not allow you to deposit the 3rd party source code with an escrow company, so you can see where this could become an issue if your customer requires you to submit "complete" source code to the escrow company. If push comes to shove, somebody may end up having to buy a new license for each of those 3rd party products, and you probably don't want that somebody to be you.

As to whether or not customers get source code in the first place, IMO that's entirely up to what you negotiate with your customers (unless things are different in the Netherlands).


>Hi,
>
>My customers do get backups of the source code on CD-Rom, preferably sent to an intermediary agent like a notary who is only allowed to give the source code to the client in case of force majeure.
>
>I have started to streamline the process of creating the backup. Reason is that all too often the hastily created backup contained omissions that led to unusable backups. Documentation is an item too.
>
>Do your customers get source code backups? If no, why not? If yes, do you have any tips?