One of the organisations I'm involved with needs a web script developed. Essentially their website needs a members portal with a document generation and management script inside (at this point).

So the current website services provider is approached for this project. And as a little background - At this point they provide web hosting, a CMS which they styled to suit, and email services.

They put out a project proposal which is skimpy on detail and deliverables, and there've been two responses so far on suggested improvements. The first increases the specifics of the functionality - mine dealt with... shall we say "the stuff webdevs don't like to talk about to tech ignorant clients."

My suggestions/concerns raised have been answered as follows (my queries in blue):

In response to your queries:

In terms of product, (per process step 3 below) I suggest the certificate is generated as a securely locked, downloadable PDF file.
- No problem, the system will function this way.

Software platform.
The OS and software platforms are not specified or disclosed.
- The portal will run on any web browser and is platform independent(PC / Apple MAC / Android / Apple iOS / Linux can be used).

Ownership.
Ownership of the developed scripts shall vest with the Association. (To some extent exactly what portions of the scripts are available to ownership is affected by the OS and software platforms).
- The portal will function as a web site – The code will reside on our cloud server and remain our intellectual property.

Deliverables.
The source code must be documented and delivered to the Association in editable electronic format.
- The portal functions and user guides will be well documented, but the source code resides on the web server and remains our intellectual property.

Hosting.
The sentence “Subsequent years will be charged according to the amount of active users on the system at R 5.00 per user per month” should be deleted.
- Because the site will be hosted on our cloud server I will need to charge R5 per user per month after the first year to recoup hosting fees. We will however not charge more per active user if we add more functions to the portal.
As a result, I've now suggested the project is put out to tender at Elance.

Maybe if I'd asked for the script platform to be specified instead of the software platform, I might not have got such a dumb response on that question. But my real issue is -

Am I being unreasonable to expect that if we're paying for script development, we're fairly entitled to insist on ownership?