I wrote a slightly spicier version of this post yesterday and thought better about posting it.
I’ve spoken about this before, but if you commission an offshore company to build some software for you and everything goes wrong, they have you over a barrel and you can find yourself well and truly stuck.
If you are in, for example, the UK and commission a UK company, ultimately the directors of that supplier know there’s a chance they could find themselves in court. It’s not easy to litigate software projects, but it can be done.
But if you have a company in, oh I dunno picking one TOTALLY AT RANDOM, Thailand, and they don’t deliver what you want, and refuse to complete the project, and won’t give you the source code until you pay all the outstanding invoices, there is no way a well-crafted letter from a solicitor will free up that situation.
The analogy I would use is this is a similar risk profile to buying a car at auction. Professionals can buy cars at auction every day, people who are new to the industry? It’s very risky.