You know fellows, I can almost relate to the 'abandoned ship' deal, with one exception. If you are paying for the work, you should be looking over the shoulder of this person, working through design details so that there are no suprises, and if properly managed, you toss a disk on the table and say 'fill it up. I want to see if you know what you are doing'. And as an aside, ask him where his source directory is, and get the computer to back it up once a day over the network. If you go for months without directly supervising and find out that the basket is empty, well, live and learn! I have two guys that program on the side for me, thus are not supervised. (One's on this list, hi John!). I have built up a trust in their work ability, quality of code, etcetera. I also tell them to email me a zip every now and then, so that there is a starting point if the proverbial bus comes along. C'mon! this isn't rocket science! "William K. Borsum" wrote: > At 11:11 PM 2/21/00 -0500, you wrote: > >> Oscar; > >> > >> You probably fall into one of the following categories; > >> A: Your hard drive completely crashed, and you have no floppy, tape, > >> or CD backup, and never printed the code out. > >> B: You are trying to copy someone's program out of their product. > >> Although it is not possible to tell, you are most likely in the latter > >> category. Statistically speaking, that is. It is an established fact > >> that many of the contributors on the list make their entire living by > >> writing software, and that any form of software theft is quite literally > >> like stealing cash from us. In light of this fact, it would probably be > >> most wise to look somewhere else for this service. > > > > OR > > > >Some contracted ***hole thought he was being treated unfairly and took off > >with the source code for a project that the contractor was working on and > >now that the deadline is approaching he needs to get the code from a single > >prototype that the guy left behind in his rush to leave. > >Statistically speaking, no you can't tell he is in the latter category. You > >know NOTHING about this guy. Is he at the bottom of the food chain, or is he > >the president of an engineering firm who THOUGHT that a good source for PIC > >information would be a PIC list. > >tony > > I gotta stand by Tony.... > > I had my first Pic Programmer/contract get religion (Scientology) and got > about $25K into a project before we discovered there was no usable code > coming from him. The next guy in line had the indecency to drop dead on us > (literally), and the third guy, a former Senior Bell Labs person with good > credentials, bid the job, got it almost working, and then tried to use the > final tweak and the source code to extort another $30K from us. Recent two > guys have turned out rather well in comparison. > Sorry guys--this is real life here. > > Our friend in Argentina may be a good joe, with not enough english to > explain what he needs and why. And could turn into a very valuable member > of the list. > > I don't like having my work ripped off, and no one else does either--and > any one who tries should get what's coming to them. BUT remember that > there can be, and often are, real, valid reasons for trying to crack code. > > The solution was given to me years ago in a marketing class: "Excessive > profit invites ruinous competition" In other words, price your product low > enough that it just isn't worth someone s time to crack it. > > You want a decent data logger? I'll be happy to sell you the boards for > ours, along with the command set and support application--at a reasonable > market price that we can both make money on. Doing one as a learning > project? I'll answer reasonable questions and help you along. It all goes > full circle in the end. > > Kelly > > William K. Borsum, P.E. -- OEM Dataloggers and Instrumentation Systems > & San Diego, California, USA