Selling source code changed what “finished” means to me

While building my own source-code products, I started noticing that “the application works” and “the product is ready for someone else” are two different milestones.

When I build something for myself, I know how the database was created. I know where configuration lives. I know why a particular table or function exists. I don't need documentation explaining decisions I made myself.

Once someone else is supposed to download the application, all of that changes.

The database can't work only because I remember how I set it up. Installation has to make sense without me standing next to the buyer. Configuration needs to be understandable. The demo needs to behave properly. Documentation suddenly becomes part of the product rather than something I'll write later.

I noticed this while working on products such as My Budget and Captain's Toolkit.

It also changed how I think about what people actually buy when they buy source code.

They aren't only buying the visible features or a folder of PHP files. They're also getting a database structure, business logic, UI decisions, configuration and a lot of ordinary development work that has already been done.

Of course, that only has value if another person can actually understand and work with it.

That's probably the part I find hardest about this type of product: the interface is easy to demonstrate, but code quality, maintainability and documentation are much harder to show before someone buys.

How do you make the quality of the code itself visible when you're selling a source-code product?

I wrote more about the model and the different people who buy this kind of software here: https://cordinant.com/blog/what-is-a-source-code-product