In the world of content management systems, the last few days have been slow for news. I have also had to slow down my blogging activity this week and last week. Until then, here is one of Drupal's founders, Dries Buytaert, explaining why an optional clause in GPL3 will likely not be adopted by the Drupal open source project:

You can't sell Drupal, or any modification you made to Drupal. You can charge money for having to make these changes but you can't make these changes available under a commercial license. Why not? Because Drupal's license, the General Public License 2 (GPL 2), mandates that all modifications also be distributed under the GPL.

But when you are providing a service through the web using GPL'ed software like Drupal, you are not actually distributing the software. You are providing access to the software. Thus, a way to make money with Drupal is to sell access to a web service built on top of Drupal. This is commonly referred to as the web services loophole. Complete Story...