Future: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 09:28, 10 September 2009

Development

Moodle development is increasingly influenced by our community of developers and users.

Your contributions in the form of ideas, code, feedback and promotion are all very welcome - see the Developer documentation and the community forums for more details on our software development life cycle. A dynamic database of proposed features and their status can be found at tracker.moodle.org. You can also pay to have certain features developed sooner - see moodle.com/development for information and a quote.

For more detailed information, see our Roadmap for developers.

Moodle Project

Naturally people like to consider risks when committing something as important as education to a particular piece of software. This is particularly so with open source where they aren't paying for anything.

Here are answers to some of the frequent questions that we hear about this.

What happens if Company X buys Moodle?

The copyrights to Moodle software can never be "sold" like they can for proprietary software. All our code is completely open source. The copyrights belong to hundreds of authors and they would ALL need to agree to any change in the license. Even if that happened, it would only apply to future code - all existing versions would remain under the existing GPL license and our large and very capable community of developers would simply fork from there and continue using and developing the GPL version.
The core company Moodle Pty Ltd has no interest in selling themselves, at any price. Martin Dougiamas has already dismissed cash offers of US$20 million for the company because he knows any such move would only damage the trust of the community and slow down growth. Note that Moodle Pty Ltd also has over 50 Moodle Partner companies worldwide who depend on Moodle and they would also all need to agree! Even if this doesn't reassure you enough, please remember that EVEN in the worst-case scenario the software would not be affected - the Moodle user community (including thousands of large Universities and companies) would organise new management among themselves and continue.

What happens if Martin gets eaten by a kangaroo?

Moodle is well beyond being driven by any single person. The company Moodle Pty Ltd has a stable foundation now, and would continue to be managed as a viable business.
Martin has been progressively delegating more and more of his roles and there are enough managers and enough processes in the project now to continue without him.
Kangaroos are herbivores. :)

@@ Line 17: / Line 17: @@
 ===What happens if Company X buys Moodle?===
-# Firstly, the copyrights to Moodle software can never be "sold" like they can for proprietary software.  All our code is completely open source.  The copyrights belong to hundreds of authors and they would ALL need to agree to any change in the license.  Even if that happened, it would only apply to future code - all existing versions would remain under the existing GPL license and our large and very capable community of developers would simply fork from there and continue using and developing the GPL version.
+# The copyrights to Moodle software can never be "sold" like they can for proprietary software.  All our code is completely open source.  The copyrights belong to hundreds of authors and they would ALL need to agree to any change in the license.  Even if that happened, it would only apply to future code - all existing versions would remain under the existing GPL license and our large and very capable community of developers would simply fork from there and continue using and developing the GPL version.
+# The core company Moodle Pty Ltd has no interest in selling themselves, at any price.  Martin Dougiamas has already dismissed cash offers of US$20 million for the company because he knows any such move would only damage the trust of the community and slow down growth.  Note that Moodle Pty Ltd also has over 50 Moodle Partner companies worldwide who depend on Moodle and they would also all need to agree!  Even if this doesn't reassure you enough, please remember that EVEN in the worst-case scenario the software would not be affected - the Moodle user community (including thousands of large Universities and companies) would organise new management among themselves and continue.
-# Secondly, the core company Moodle Pty Ltd has no interest in selling themselves, at any price.  Martin Dougiamas has already dismissed cash offers of US$20 million for the company because he knows any such move would only damage the trust of the community and slow down growth.  Note that Moodle Pty Ltd also has over 50 Moodle Partner companies worldwide who depend on Moodle and they would also all need to agree!  Even if this doesn't reassure you enough, please remember that EVEN in the worst-case scenario the software would not be affected - the Moodle user community (including thousands of large Universities and companies) would organise new management among themselves and continue.
 ===What happens if Martin gets eaten by a kangaroo?===
-# Firstly, Moodle is well beyond being driven by any single person.  The company Moodle Pty Ltd has a stable foundation now, and would continue to be managed as a viable business.
+# Moodle is well beyond being driven by any single person.  The company Moodle Pty Ltd has a stable foundation now, and would continue to be managed as a viable business.
+# Martin has been progressively delegating more and more of his roles and there are enough managers and enough processes in the project now to continue without him.
-# Secondly, Martin has been progressively delegating more and more of his roles and there are enough managers and enough processes in the project now to continue without him.
+# Kangaroos are herbivores.  :)
-# Thirdly, kangaroos are herbivores.  :)

Documentation