I apologize that this issue may have already been covered numerous times but I would just like to get opinions on my specific situation.
I live in the UK and I'm currently in full time employment as a software developer. Recently I have been doing a bit of work on the side for people (in my spare time), generally just updating small web sites etc for an hourly fee.
However, one of the people I sometimes freelance for has asked me to write him some software. He intends on selling the software to clients for a fee and has asked me how much I would charge him to write the software so that he can "gauge what we should charge the customer".
The topic of payment has not being discussed up until now (I have just charged an hourly fee for previous updates to his website that I have done). I am not really sure how to charge for this software, i.e. should I:
Sell him the software at a fixed price based on how long it will take me to write
Offer to write the software, initially for free, and take a cut of the income for each license sold to the end client
I don't event know if he would be happy with the latter to be honest.
Also if I where to do the former, who would own the source code? I am worried that, having sold him the software, I will then end up being responsible for support, installation or ad-hoc update requests from the customer.
On the other hand I'm not sure that I should sell him the software for 'x' pounds for him to then make '50 times x' pounds selling it on.
Any advice?
Many Thanks