devdilemma

There's no agreement outside of the contract that says we were contracted to write the software according to provided specifications. But you are correct we offered an exclusivity to the client but they were not interested in paying the price.

Ultimately, I believe the company(dev shop) has decided to sit with the customer and offer exclusivity or some kind of partnership on the software one last time this week take it from there.

Thank you for answering from the ethical point of view. A piece of information I left out was that before beginning the project the option to develop the software with exclusivity was offered however the client insisted they didn't want it as it was too expensive for them.

Additionally the software is not so unique that there aren't alternatives in the market (online etc.) actually there are at least 15 other competitors in the space using other software/solutions.

In any event we intend to meet with the client sometime this week to discuss if they want to purchase the rights to the software as there are existing competitors in the space who wants a similar software.

Some in the company has said that to make it more "ethical" the other clients will pay for "development" i.e. providing us with their requirements and building according to their spec but my thinking is this is just a justification.