One of the challenges faced by Design companies who wish to roll out quality Drupal websites is to keep on a track of the knowledge they acquire with each project.
Simply outsourcing each website to the next available development company can result in wildly different implementations - different modules, different administration, different configuration.
It is possible to zip up a previous website and use it again, and many companies do this successfully, but this makes it difficult set incremental goals for improvement against rapidly changing best-practice.
Our Installation Management service is geared towards Design companies who aim to roll out large numbers of Drupal websites with little hassle.
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Our goals
::: Allow you to outsource all Drupal installation, set-up and development.
::: Give you the freedom to choose and change developers.
::: Help you to build upon a base-line website with each successful project.
::: Give your sales people confidence about what they are selling.
::: Provide complete transparency to you.
Web Interface
You have access to a private web interface for reviewing, demonstrating and downloading your installation.
The features of this interface are:
::: Browse an installation (for sales demo or experimenting).
::: Re-install your installation (to confirm it’s working).
::: Check that the modules are up to date.
::: Browse older versions of your installation.
Technical features
::: Maintain a 'favorite' Drupal installation in Version Control (Subversion).
::: Ability to download your installation for deployment by developers who cannot access the Version Control system.
::: Ability to allow other developers (eg. not from Em Space) to improve your installation.
Licensing
Drupal is commonly described as 'free' software, but more specifically is available under the the GPL licence. To learn about this see the Drupal FAQ.
So, any website you build with Drupal is yours to keep. You retain copyright of your designs, and you are not obliged to give your site away. You can also contract other developers to work on your websites - although we recommend a non-disclosure agreement.
An example: Drupal.org (which is run on Drupal). The maintainers of Drupal.org are under no obligation to provide the source code of Drupal.org itself. They could create a similar site using Drupal.org as a starting point - without contravening the GPL license. But they couldn't legally distribute it because it would require releasing other media which is not GPL.
If you 'distribute' your website to any third party, the person who receives the site cannot be bound by any license other than GPL. So if you give the code to a client, you cannot prevent them from giving it to someone else. For this reason, if you want to fully protect the IP you used to build and configure you should also take responsibility for hosting the website.
Remember, we're not lawyers! You should consult your own legal council for more information.
What are you waiting for?
Em Space is about making great websites and putting our clients in control. We invite you to join the ride!
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