Review a piece of code bought from someone else

Question

In How can I speed up this serialized array generation php script? the OP states, that they "bought one [...] script" from someone else. Since I could not identify if the script in question was also bought, I asked the OP in a comment to clarify this, since I thought it would be off-topic otherwise.

Another Code Review user then told me, that even if the OP bought it, "[t]his is on topic if the OP is going to maintain this going forward".

That left me wondering:

Is it okay to ask for a review of a piece of code that you did not write yourself, but bought from someone?

Reading the answer of Mathieu Guindon at Asking about code in a pull request to my code base here on meta seems to indicate that this is not the case.

Maybe related:

• What does it take to make code your own?

Answer 1

All we know is that the OP bought a script: we know nothing of the license it came with (if any), and we don't know whether the terms of that license allow the OP to modify it, let alone putting the code up for review on a public forum, under a (likely) different license.

You did well to ask: if it turns out the OP is not allowed to do this, then the post (and its eventual answers) could be subject to a takedown process, and we would much rather avoid this.

If no clarifications are made, I'm leaning towards closing as off-topic on the basis of authorship (edit: done that now); if OP confirms they own the copy of the code that they bought and that they're free to modify it and re-distribute it under the terms of CC-by-SA 4.0, then the question can be reopened, and the code be reviewed.

Answer 2

Well, the script came with no exact license. In the "terms" file it only states:

Licensing system rules:

• A license belongs to a domain / subdomain and not to a person
• Each license is valid only for a particular domain or subdomain.
• In case you sell a domain script is installed, the license is transferred to the new owner.
• In case you want to move the script to another domain, you can do this one one time for a license for free. The license may be transferred to the new domain (the script should be deleted on the old domain and the license on old domain will be canceled). Contact us if you want to move the script to another site / domain.

Prohibitions:

• You cannot sale or distribution (free or for a fee) this script, content database or some piece of script code.
• The code of this script is forbidden to change and redistribute it (free or paid). You can change the script just for your own use and not to resell.
• In case you have multiple sites and you want to install the script on multiple sites (or multiple subdomains of the same domain), you will have to buy a separate license for each installation in different location. We gives discounts on the purchase of multiple licenses (please contact us for details.)
• You can delete / edit copyright link to http://this-is-the-link only if you bought the license that allows that. Deletion or modification without the right of the copyright link to us automatically leads to loss of license validity (even if you bought it), it can reactivate only after paying a penalty. Besides the loss of license, delete the link leads to loss of the right to receive technical support from us.

I want to change it for me and just for myself, to get it work.