The Moodle Trust employs a number of full-time software developers who are implementing and co-ordinating the development of the software. Programmers around the globe contribute to the development. Some are core developers; some contribute through testing, while others offer small-scale patches and amendments. While some are paid by employers who benefit from Moodle such as universities or companies, others are volunteers who are enthusiastic about Moodle, or programming, or both.

A roadmap exists for Moodle, which is driven by feature requests from the Moodle community. These are users who either post requirements on tracker.moodle.org or who provide feedback at Moodle conferences called MoodleMoots. Some features are paid for (see Business Model section), for example, Microsoft part-financed the development of the XMLDB database abstraction layer.

The Moodle trust has three main revenue-generating channels:

The two main expenses of the Moodle Trust are staff salaries and the maintenance of its community site www.moodle.org, which includes free forum-based support, full documentation, a bug tracking facility, and many more features.

If you want to deepen your knowledge on development and business models of open-source software, The Cathedral & the Bazaar by Eric S. Raymond is a must-read. For more information on the Moodle model, search for Moodle: a case study in sustainability by Martin Dougiamas who is Moodle's benevolent dictator.