Long and the short is I am buying out a software that's been developed, while retaining licence to a database. There is no API for the tool as of yet. To deliver this DB and functionality, the seller has suggested delivering via API. I agree this is best practice in this case. However she wants to now review the sale price to factor in this cost of her hiring to develop the API. My standpoint is; without this API I would simply implement another free API solution in its place and remove the extra licence agreement. However the DB is advantageous to existing users, and she will be maintaining it to feed into my to app as long as I licence it. I feel she is already getting a large sum for the software and if the DB is not "fit for licence" already, upon realising this, it should be a cost to her, to get it ready for further licence/profit on her end, and not a cost I should take in as the buyer, as she retains ownership of this API/DB and can further benefit in future, whether I stop licencing it or not, the API is done... so why should my sale price cover this development, when I will be paying recurring licencing? Is this normal for the buyer to pay for an API to be create d of something they would like to liscence within their app or should this be the sellers cost, or shared?
You are buying the software 'as is'. If you require further things done to it, you have to pay for it. It doesn't matter if she can then turn around and sell the same work to someone else. You are the one who's asking for this feature. So negotiate a separate agreement and pay for for the custom work you want.
Yeah, it does makes sense. The software can be sold to me without this DB or API, though, and I can implement something in its place to satisfy users needs for probably less $ in Dev and then have no ongoing licencing. I guess a better query is that I'm wondering if it's worth licencing something which needs me to front the cost of making it developer friendly just to continue with this DB, instead of implementing my own solution in its place, now I know it will take API integration either way. It was the sellers idea to licence this portion of the tool in the first place and I said tentative yes to paying ongoing licencing before knowing I would have to pay additional to get it ready to be used within the app, so I guess that's why I am a bit stuck with what to do.