I recently built my first module for Drupal, which exposes data from the Userpoints module to Views. There was some talk with the CEO of my company about releasing the module to the community as a contributed module, and some hedging about whether to release it or not.

Releasing modules shouldn't even be a topic of discussion within a company. The work I did on this module was built off the many, many, many hours others have spent on Userpoints and Views. In addition, thousands of developers contributed to, and continue to contribute to Drupal. For a company to even consider taking an Open Source project, developing a feature on top of it and then not releasing it, is rude and insulting to all the developers that have work on this OSS project.

Companies who use Drupal and other open source software have directly benefited from the work of thousands. These companies have saved gobs and gobs of cash by stating with Drupal as a base and then building on top. That base was built by ordinary people, and that base depends upon people contributing their code.

Credit should be given where it is due and if your company has sponsored the development of Drupal modules by paying your salary, that should be mentioned. At the very least, your company's name can be in the module itself with the README file and within the code.

Again, this should not even be a topic of discussion. If you work with Drupal and extend its functionality, release the code to the community.

Drupal, PHP, modules, extend, oss, open-source, software, philosophy, release, community