Own Your Source Code: What Full Software IP Ownership Means
When a Globaprom build ends, everything is yours: the source code, the repository it lives in, the data it holds, and the infrastructure accounts it runs on. That sentence sounds standard until you read the fine print at other vendors. This page defines our version precisely, because "you own the code" means very different things across the software industry.
What You Receive at Handover
Handover is a defined step of how we work, not a favor you request later. It includes:
- The full source code, in a repository under your own account. If we built in ours, we transfer it.
- Deployment configuration and documentation, written for the next developer who touches the system, whoever that is.
- Your data, in your database, exportable in standard formats. Nothing sits in a system only we can read.
- Infrastructure accounts in your name. Hosting, domains, and third-party services are set up under your billing wherever the provider allows it, and transferred where they were not.
- A written IP assignment. Ownership of the delivered work is assigned to you in the contract, not implied in a sales conversation.
What Ownership Means in Practice
Software IP ownership is only real if you can act on it without asking us. In practice, you can:
- Hire any developer tomorrow. The documentation assumes a competent stranger, and the stack uses mainstream technology rather than a house framework.
- Change anything. Modify, extend, rebrand, or retire the software. No permission, no notice.
- Move it. Change hosting providers or bring it into your own infrastructure whenever you like.
- Stop paying us entirely. There is no license fee, no per-seat charge, and no mandatory support contract. Optional care plans exist, and the word optional is literal.
The result is proprietary software in the correct sense: proprietary to you. For a growing company that matters beyond convenience. Owned software is an asset on your side of the table at due diligence, an acquisition, or a funding round; a rented workflow is a liability someone will question.
The Two Lock-Ins You Avoid
Agency lock-in. The classic version: your code lives in the agency's repository, the contract licenses it back to you instead of assigning it, and maintenance is "strongly recommended" because nobody else can read the handover. Every one of those levers is absent from our model on purpose. If we are worth keeping after delivery, we should have to earn it project by project.
SaaS dependency. Subscriptions have their place; we say so plainly on our custom software development services page when a SaaS genuinely fits. But per-seat fees compound forever, the feature roadmap belongs to someone else, and a price increase is a letter you cannot answer. Custom software you own has one cost curve: the build, then whatever upkeep you choose.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who owns the code generated by an AI software vendor?
The client should, and with us the client does. Our contract assigns ownership of all delivered code to you, AI-generated and human-written alike, and our tooling choices claim no rights over output. Ask any AI software vendor to show you the assignment clause. If they cannot, that silence is the answer.
Can another developer really take over the software?
Yes. Handover documentation is written for exactly that reader, the stack is deliberately mainstream, and the repository, deployment configuration, and data are already in your accounts. Several clients hand the repository to their own IT team on day one.
Do you keep any rights to our software or reuse our code?
We keep no rights to your product and never reuse your codebase for another client. General knowledge and technique travel with us; your code, data, and scope documents do not. Confidentiality has been our working condition for 20+ years of translation business, and it applies here unchanged.
Does owning the code change the price?
No. Full ownership is included in every quote, not sold as a tier. Our fixed-price packages all end in the same handover.
Own the Next Thing You Build
One scoping call gets you a written scope, a fixed price, and a delivery date, for software that belongs to you on the day it ships.