Dave Tosh says in the comments:
“We are planning to release the system as Open Source – hopefully by the end of this week, fingers crossed!”
To which I say that is fan-bloody-tastic! For those of you who don’t know Elgg is a kind of authenticated blog / FOAF tool that might just be the answer you’re looking for when it comes to protecting the kiddies while reaping the rewards of the social networking & communication possibilities for blogging… one to keep an eye on!
Dave, have you considered some sort of developer / user community, a la WPMU, that might seriously enhance some development?