Sites selling "Installation Services"...

...and there's nothing against any developer of add-ons from putting some text in a Read Me file that comes with the add-on in which they ask for donations and provide their Pay Pal account email address to which donations can go.

Vger

exdealsad:

Hi,
I am not totally ZENNED yet. but permit my little contribution.
You see I came to be Zenned from a company that I contracted to design a e commerce site. I found myself with zen cart ..... kinda like it.
I paid the company for there services. But they used zen cart totally for the design and they claim its their design. Now tell me who should receive the bulk of the money that I paid to these fellows?

HENRY

Just another voice that concurs with the other responses... The money you paid should go to the developers that you hired.

Although this may seem unfair to the zencart dev team (and the authors of any modules that were also used), the fact remains that this isn't really of your concern. The zencart team have thier own business model that I'm sure will provide them with a reasonable income for their efforts, whether this be from direct donations, or from the kickbacks they get to promote zencart hosts, and even private support.

It also doesn't make any difference whether you paid $50 for the company you hired, or $5000 ... Whatever it was, if you agreed to their terms and they provided what was promised then all should be happy. It is quite understandable that a person could get very annoyed to pay $xxx one day, only to find they could have gotten the same thing cheaper if they had waited or shopped around, but this will apply to any purchase or service, not just zencart and/or developers.

Bottom line, pay those that you hired, and let everyone else look after their own business.

This isn't to say the zencart team deserve nothing. If you wish to make a donation to them I'm sure it will be greatly appreciated, because donations form a large part of their business model, and without them... who knows what direction things will take.

Cheers
Rod

exdealsad:

Hi,
I am not totally ZENNED yet. but permit my little contribution.
You see I came to be Zenned from a company that I contracted to design a e commerce site. I found myself with zen cart ..... kinda like it.
I paid the company for there services. But they used zen cart totally for the design and they claim its their design. Now tell me who should receive the bulk of the money that I paid to these fellows?

HENRY

It's wrong to confuse FUNCTIONALITY with DESIGN.

The zencart software provides the FUNCTIONALITY - ie: the ability of a software platform to enable sophisticated systems that facilitate eCommerce to happen. The software is opensource, and is therefore free - in the sense "free to use whichever way you choose to use it".

(I use zencart to run websites that have NO eCommerce. In these cases, the software meets certain FUNCTIONAL needs, and is appropriate.)

DESIGN (ie: the COSMETICS of the site) is different from FUNCTIONALITY. Here, we build graphics (very time consuming) and re-structure the templates and the css - a lot of it being BESPOKE to the client. To do this can take scores of hours and involve the skills of several experts, each asking for a salary or fee, and each entitled to do so.

If our clients pay for the design, then the design belongs to THEM. They exchange ownership of the design for money. (If you buy a car, does it still belong to Chrysler - because they "designed" the car? No... it belongs to YOU. You paid for it, and it is therefore YOUR property.

Your "designers" are confused. They DO NOT own the design (unless you haven't paid them yet). Neither do they "own" zencart.

If you have paid them IN FULL for the design of your site, then YOU are the legal owner of it.

If they are refusing to give you the design you have paid for then you should consider sending them a lawyer's letter demanding that they give the ownership of what you have paid for.

When someone does a design for us, which we then turn into a template for a site, it is clearly and legally understood that the design does not belong to them and we get all Photoshop and/or Illustrator files in full (with all layers) before a final payment is made. When the client makes their final payment to us the design becomes theirs.

That's the one thing you really have to be careful about - getting all image files, with all layers, before making your final payment.

Vger