Re: Customers that make their own docs

[Gene Kim-Eng <techwr -at- genek -dot- com>]

This is a pretty common scenario with OEM products, hardware as well as 
software. Customers take vendors' docs and use them as sources for their 
own.

I've been on both sides of that process, and have never seen a vendor do 
any coordination to sync up source and customer output. The whole idea 
of OEM is that the customers buy stuff for less than what it would cost 
to develop and produce it in-house and assume ownership and 
responsibility for supporting and keeping it up to date.

Beware of being involved in any way in customer-produced IP, because by 
doing so your company will increase its potential liability for anything 
that goes wrong with it. You want to limit your responsibility to 
providing your customers with accurate and up to date information about 
what you deliver to them.

If your company does decide to take more of a role in customer-produced 
IP, be sure to press the need to make it a paid service for which it 
charges enough to cover the added costs and potential liabilities.

Gene Kim-Eng


On 3/2/2021 11:44 AM, kafkascampi wrote: