Licensing of moodle mobile

Licensing of moodle mobile

by Raghuram Iyer -
Number of replies: 6

Hello,


I own a startup that focuses on E-Learning and EdTech. we have a portal that uses moodle to teach students. We charge a small fee for each courses when people enroll, Now the site is fully re-branded with our custom css and we have a few inhouse plugins we wrote. I was wondering if we could do the same for a mobile app. I looked into docs about it,  Moodle Offers a re-branding  of app for a price of US $3000/year while still the source is open. I have people in my company who has the skills to take up that source and build a completely rebranded app, now my question is, is it legal to do so? The source states its Apache 2.0 license which implies that it is legal until I segregate the changes I've made, if thats the case then does all features of moodle mobile comes with that source? Can I use that source, reskin it, add some more plugins and still do a commercial business out of it? I am confused about it because if only rebranding and building the app is the case I think $3000 is a little expensive(atleast in my country smile ). So I just want to make sure what's going on.


PS: by stating its expensive, I never mean to offend the Moodle guys. They are doing a great job by keeping moodle open.

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In reply to Raghuram Iyer

Re: Licensing of moodle mobile

by Mary Cooch -
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I've just moved your question to the dedicated Moodle for mobile forum where hopefully you will receive a response  soon.

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In reply to Mary Cooch

Re: Licensing of moodle mobile

by Raghuram Iyer -

thanks! kinda panicked when I couldn't find the thread in general :D 

fingers crossed.

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In reply to Raghuram Iyer

Re: Licensing of moodle mobile

by Juan Leyva -
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Hi Raghuram,

could you clarify if you are just asking if you can do your branded app for your Moodle where you sell courses?

Or, are you asking if you can do business with the mobile app (like re-selling it branded to other companies)?

Regards, Juan
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In reply to Juan Leyva

Re: Licensing of moodle mobile

by Raghuram Iyer -

Hello Juan,


its the first one. we are just going to sell courses. 

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In reply to Raghuram Iyer

Re: Licensing of moodle mobile

by Juan Leyva -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

Hi Raghuram,

yes, you can build your custom app with your custom plugins. Moodle Mobile is open source and all the features supported by the app are in the published source code.

Please, note that building a branded app is not like adding customizations to Moodle, these are the differences:

- In order to publish in the stores, you will need a developer account for Google Play and an Apple (cost money). The Apple one requires a yearly renewal.

- You need to do all the publication process (create the keystores, certificates, etc...) Certificates are valid for one year so you must to renew them every year.

- If you fix a bug, add additional functionality or try to keep your custom version updated with the latest additions to the official app, you'd need to do all the publication process again.

- You can't use the public Airnotifier (push notifications) service. The notifications service relies on your own developer certificates.

- The last point means that you need to install your own notification infrastructure (that also requires some complex setup).

- You can't use the word "Moodle" in your app's name or name of the app in the store (remember is a trademark).

I hope this clarifies your doubts

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In reply to Juan Leyva

Re: Licensing of moodle mobile

by Raghuram Iyer -

Hello Juan,

Thanks for the detailed feedback. this pretty much answers everything. Thanks a ton!. Yes we have some other products up on both playstore and appstore so we'll use that account. About the notification, we use onesignal push notifications for our apps so I guess since moodle mobile is made in ionic that should work. I guess the bug fixing and other stuff will be sorted out by our dev team. So i'll be careful with the trademark thing. one more question I have is, do we need to put some attributions? something like "powered by moodle" in our app? I mean I'll anyway do it because moodle guys are doing a great job. just wanted to double check if thats absolutely necessary. 

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