GPL and Tessitura Licence

Our website is powered by Drupal and we've raised this exact issue with the Tessitura Network Web Team. I also discussed it briefly in the Web Developers Forum at TLCC2011. We've struggled with the ethics of Open Source sharing vs. the Tessitura NDA as well.

Our web firm, Gorton Studios, who developed customized Drupal modules for our Tessitura web integration, has a solution that I proposed in Orlando. Here's the gist of it:

- Any custom code built from Drupal core needs to be GPL as well. Meaning, if we decide we want to share our custom Tessitura Drupal modules, it needs to be done through the Drupal website.
- Tessitura says we can share code among other licensees, but it must be done in a private environment.
- Of course, these two points conflict, so we haven't been able to share our code.

What Gorton Studios has proposed:

- Rebuild the custom Drupal modules, pulling all of the Tessitura-specific information (API calls, etc.) out of the code.
- Create a "Key Module" (or something like that) which houses all of the Tessitura-specific stuff.
- This Key Module would not be part of the code shared publically in the Drupal community, and instead somthing that would need to be obtained through the Tessitura Network.
- Apparently this is cool with GPL. Our firm cited Amazon as a company that has something similar with their code/API.

I'm excited to get this discussion going within the Tessitura Community. With the growing use of Open Source software solutions to power websites, I think the timing is right.

Feel free to contact me directly with questions, ideas, etc.
Eric

Eric Mueller
Webmaster & Social Media Guy
Science Museum of Minnesota

Email: emueller@smm.org
Phone: (651) 221-9455
Twitter: @sciencemuseummn

Our website is powered by Drupal and we've raised this exact issue with the Tessitura Network Web Team. I also discussed it briefly in the Web Developers Forum at TLCC2011. We've struggled with the ethics of Open Source sharing vs. the Tessitura NDA as well.

Our web firm, Gorton Studios, who developed customized Drupal modules for our Tessitura web integration, has a solution that I proposed in Orlando. Here's the gist of it:

- Any custom code built from Drupal core needs to be GPL as well. Meaning, if we decide we want to share our custom Tessitura Drupal modules, it needs to be done through the Drupal website.
- Tessitura says we can share code among other licensees, but it must be done in a private environment.
- Of course, these two points conflict, so we haven't been able to share our code.

What Gorton Studios has proposed:

- Rebuild the custom Drupal modules, pulling all of the Tessitura-specific information (API calls, etc.) out of the code.
- Create a "Key Module" (or something like that) which houses all of the Tessitura-specific stuff.
- This Key Module would not be part of the code shared publically in the Drupal community, and instead somthing that would need to be obtained through the Tessitura Network.
- Apparently this is cool with GPL. Our firm cited Amazon as a company that has something similar with their code/API.

I'm excited to get this discussion going within the Tessitura Community. With the growing use of Open Source software solutions to power websites, I think the timing is right.

Feel free to contact me directly with questions, ideas, etc.
Eric

Eric Mueller
Webmaster & Social Media Guy
Science Museum of Minnesota

Email: emueller@smm.org
Phone: (651) 221-9455
Twitter: @sciencemuseummn