Is Freelancer liable to share his code upon completion of project?

[jatin_jobs]

Hello Community Team,

Inside the enterprise environment, as developer whatever you code on the company's project is the property of the company so the code always stays with the company.

How about on Upwork? if you hire freelancer, so upon completion of App development, should he be sharing his source code or not?

If he doesn't share the source code, the client can no longer do development on its own and this waste his time and money.

Is there similar dispute or official article on upwork?

Thanks

[prestonhunter]

Source code belongs to the client who pays for the work.

I am not sure why you are asking this question, as the answer should be obvious. You yourself point out that it would be a waste of the client's money if the client doesn't receive the source code.

I would correct something you said:

The client should not receive the source code upon completion of the project.

The client is the one paying for the work, so the work ALWAYS BELONGS TO THE CLIENT. Technically, one could make a case that with fixed-price contracts a freelancer could submit work while using the Submit Work Button.

But PERSONALLY: I provide the source code to the client continuously, as soon as the contract begins. I provide root level access to the client to the server where I do all the work. So there is never a time when the client has less access to the source code than I do.

I would advise Upwork clients to not work with freelancers who withhold access to source code.

[jatin_jobs]

Thanks much. Yes, you said it correctly that my question's description itself answered but i was looking for more opinion. I had a freelancer who claimed to hold source code at first, but upon further tell him to provide me source code he agreed to send it to me in a day or two. I also found a similar response on: https://community.upwork.com/t5/Programmers-Developers/Ownership-of-completed-code/m-p/625403#M2888

[florydev]

---

Rajpura J wrote:

Hello Community Team,

Inside the enterprise environment, as developer whatever you code on the company's project is the property of the company so the code always stays with the company.

How about on Upwork? if you hire freelancer, so upon completion of App development, should he be sharing his source code or not?

If he doesn't share the source code, the client can no longer do development on its own and this waste his time and money.

Is there similar dispute or official article on upwork?

Thanks

---

My reading of the TOS is that source code should be provided if payment was made.  Like Preston I typically provide source code as I go along and if my clients don't have a source control system, and I always advise that they should, then I give them access to mine.

But there is almost no excuse for them to create an account on some sort of cloud-based source control and have their dev's checkin to that, routinely.  Anyone who does not checkin routinely is suspect in my book anyway (where is their backup?).

I also could make a case for not providing code on a milestone basis until payment was submitted but I doubt I would ever do it that way.  Within the Upwork TOS they are not entitled to the IP for the code UNTIL they pay, so that code is mine.  Legally, at least within the US, until I abdicate IP rights for my souce code they don't have a right to it.