Lounge

Moodlista mounts soap box
The idea that an "open source" product cannot go commercial shows confusion between open source and free (libre). This is one of Richard Stallmans obsessions and reasons he insists on the word free and rejection of the Open Source term. One of the problems with terminology is that English is the dominant language of software development and there is ambiguity in the meaning of Free. Free can mean either without cost (i.e. free beer) or it can mean freedom as in Free speeach. Latin based languages tend to use the words like gratis and libre to indicate the two meanings.

Davids comment about software under the GPL (like moodle) tends to be true, it is very hard for it to go commercial. However there are Open Source licenses such as the Apache license, the Perl license and the Netscape Public Liscense. that are designed to allow the additional freedom of taking a version of it commercial. I am not a lawyer or even much of a student of law but I am very interested in software liscences.