This may be a minor point, but I think it goes to the heart of some of our concerns here. I have a business directory I build with another open source program "phpLinkDirectory". On the internal control panel for this application, there is a place where you can approve categories that users have submitted, but strangely, there is no place in the product itself for users to submit these categories. Why would this be? Because one of their developers developed "category submit" see more as a commercial mod, and the owners of the software, not wanting to step on the toes of a talented developer, never put it in the product.

I'm not sure that a "points and gifts system" should be a part of the product. I think a case could be made that this would be the kind of thing should be a third party mod- but where does that line get drawn? D6 had an absolutely horrible and dysfunctional menu system. Why was this never replaced in the many upgrade versions? The menu system is as basic as you can get. Could it be because a Boonex developer had developed a menu system and was now claiming the code for this basic function?

That, I think, is the potentially corrupting influence of this kind of activity. If Boonex wants to allow their developers to develop commercial mods on their own time, they should make very, very sure it is not some basic function that should be a part of the product.

Just to be clear, I love the new architecture of the beta, and hope that a vibrant commercial market forms for these mods, but Mastermind was correct to raise this as a concern.