This isn't just happening in Nigeria. Sydney Opera House ran something almost as vile as this too[0]. The eventually relented and relaxed the IP clause, but this sort of scumbaggy behaviour is becoming common now that everyone is jumping onto the hackathon bandwagon<p>[0] <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/18/sydney_opera_house_to_devs_build_our_app_for_free_wear_patent_pain/" rel="nofollow">http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/18/sydney_opera_house_t...</a>
Once, during an interview, the interviewer started asking me solutions to very real-world problems which I could immediately understand they must have been facing at that time. A high level discussion was fine to judge my ability, but he started getting deep into the implementation details. I got the sense that he is trying to get a solution to his problem in the pretext of interview. I gave him the solutions as I would have anyway done so had anybody asked for help. I have since then thought many times but could not decide if it was unethical or just a harmless stroke of creativity.<p>OPs case certainly seems to have cross the limit of ethics though.
Sigh, I suppose we're supposed to feel outraged. Believe it or not, other industries have faced their share of exploitation too.<p>Software development, at its lowest level, is a new form of labor. It's only natural for the economy of the world to search for the next big source of labor which can be exploited for cheap development. The market is also experimenting with different schemes and mechanisms by which to exploit. Let's not act surprised- what we do is not incomprehensible magic; the labour situation is fundamentally the same as every other industry. Software is new though, so it will take a while for the global economy to figure out just who and how to squeeze, in order to harvest that sweet sweet software juice. Lets just say globalization has its consequences.<p>If you're living in the third world and you can code for work, you're probably doing better than most people in your area, who are likely being exploited for their physical labour or worse. We should feel outraged for those living in slave-like working conditions. Lets talk about ending that. What we're seeing here is just a tiny side-effect of economic development; lets try to address the worst.
As a graphic design major turned programmer, this was very common to students in design school. Never have seen it with dev projects though.<p>I think new students and freelancers need to be aware of these type of scams in all their forms.
I'm curious on the exact legalese (not so much to go look it up though). "The year-in, year-out maintenance and support of the app shall be the sole responsibilities of the winner." - Okay. And if I don't do it, then what? This stipulates they're solely my responsibilities, but that means I get to decide what maintenance and support is necessary, too.<p>The rest of it is terrible though. Upon winning you have to complete the app according to unspecified additional requirements? Without any guarantee of additional pay or anything else? Ha ha ha ha ha. No. I don't care if you need the money, don't even try such a thing; you're selling your life for $3k.
While this is absolutely appalling from our standpoint, other countries dont play by the same rules. Nigeria has a lot of poverty and while i've no idea what the cost of living is over there, i bet $3k goes a lot further there, than in the US.<p>So while that IS exploitative, it should be better and i dont condone it at all, its perhaps the first step in a road to a better tech industry. Sometimes an industry doesnt just start at the end goal, it has to have a few shitty iterations before things improve.<p>Perhaps the next competition will be fairer after learning some lessons by running this one?
In fairness (perhaps) to them "A Service Contract Agreement, Service Level Agreement and Source Code Escrow Agreement shall be signed between the organisers and the winner to guarantee the operations of the app year-in, year-out" implies to me that they will agree to pay something in return. I doubt they'd expect the developer to service the thing for ever and ever for nothing?
I think you can browse Craigslist and find at least one ad like this every week in every major American city.<p>I chalk up developer pricing to inexperience and not malice, but sometimes I am not so sure.