This is in keeping in line with open-source services becoming commercial companies: Mozilla, BitTorrent, WordPress and others: OpenAds, the open-source ad server software (we use a predecessor of OpenAds, PhpAdsNew, as our company’s ad serving software), has gone commercial, and taken $5 million in first round of funding, led by Index Ventures, with participation from First Round Capital, Mangrove Capital Partners, and O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures. The London-based company plans to use the funds to accelerate product development and expand its team. Besides the usual ad serving and tracking functions, Openads also allows for integration with about 30 other ad networks worldwide, it says. It will remain free.

Reuters: London-based Openads was founded as a grassroots, open-source software development project in 1999. It has signed up 25,000 Web site publishers in more than 100 countries and 20 languages. Instead of charging up-front, Openads supplies hand-holding services to publishers, as well as more advanced services to bigger publishers. It makes money in part from referral fees that advertising networks pay it for connecting them to publishers who use its software.