Philip Pemberton wrote:

>   I've developed a PHP-based application for someone. He now considers it to
> be "complete enough to use" (and I do too), and wants to get it all up and
> running on his server. Problem is, I don't want to hand over all the code
> without payment, and I doubt he'll want to hand over any money without seeing
> the source code.
> 
>   So, what would you do? The best plan I've come up with is to hand over half
> of the code, then when the payment comes through send the other half... How
> is this sort of thing generally done in the software development industry?

1. If you have a signed contract you could trust him and fight it out 
in court if he does not pay.

2. Is there any way you could run the application on a server of your 
own but pointed at his data sources for purposes of an acceptance 
test? That way he could see if it meets his specs but could not use it 
if he did not pay.

3. Make him pay as much as you can get him to agree to up front with 
the balance due after a successful test.

In the future it would be best to agree on these type of details 
before the project starts but I suspect many of us have ben in similar 
positions starting out.

Tim
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