From: junk5@...
Date: 2005-11-10T18:32:14+09:00
Subject: Re: Best way to time-limit a rails/ruby application

Get a lawyer to send a letter giving them a hard deadline for payment,
warning that you will take them to court if payment is not made in full
by that date. Ideally, it would be sensible to have a clause in
whatever contract you signed with the customer stating that they incur
your legal costs if they refuse to pay in a timely manner, but if not
you'll have to swallow this cost yourself. If you don't have any
written contract with your customer, then you may have to put this one
down to experience.

You can waste a lot of time writing code that protects you, but in the
end it will come down to a test in code that essentially reads "if
allowed==true then do_it() else do_not()"; if your customer thinks it's
worth their while, they'll just find and modify this code. The reason
the big boys write this kind of protection is that they have millions
of customers and assume that only a small (and acceptable) number will
modify the code. The big boys can't afford to take every one of their
customers to court (it would be too expensive and they'd lose all their
customers). You only have one customer; if you have a proper contract,
you should easily be able to take them to court. You'll lose their
future custom, but I guess you'd rather them be a drain on your
competitors' resources than your own.

I imagine that a scary letter from a lawyer will encourage them to pay
up and that a trip to court won't be needed.