I always give my clients everything they need to have someone else maintain the app, but I don't normally turn over copyright to them. Contrary to what most programmers think, hiring a consultant does not give the client automatic copyright to what you produce. Only employees are under that kind of agreement. (This is US law--I don't know what the laws state in other countries.)

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>Just out of curiousity, those of you who are independant contractors and developers; how much of your source code do you normally give over to clients? Most people (prospective clients) I've talked to want rights to the code, which is understandable. But how do you protect your class libraries and other custom methods? If they "own" the source code as "work for hire", custom class libraries need to be turned over in addition to forms and .prg's, right? Otherwise they can't modify the application in the future.
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>If a client hires you to develop an app, and then gets someone else to help out or build a different part, what's to keep the other developer from copying your stuff? Or is that just a part of the business?
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>- Brian