I have been outsourcing work for various programming scripts. I have many ideas and I obviously want to resell them. I'm wondering what the rules are for selling someone's programs. Are there inherit laws to it or do you have to establish license agreements in advance.
It depends on what the terms of the outsource contract was or is. If you contract as a "work for hire" with all rights passing to you then you may do anything you like with the scripts as you own them just like you wrote them. Note that "work for hire" is a legal term and should be included in your contracts. It is also a good ideal to specifically mention that you are buying all rights to the scripts as a part of your contract. You can soften that a little by calling it non-exclusive rights if it is common code that the scriptor may want to sell in the future. Let's be honest, most scripts are data in, data out and mysql queries. The "look and feel" may be unique but the behind the scences stuff is very repetive and really hard to make unique.
You need to have the rights to resell the scripts, otherwise it could possibly be copyright infringement.