I think this is a fun and productive way to learn how to code which I why I built https://xcadia.app/ which has lots of examples of simple retro games that you can edit and learn coding from.
I spent countless hours learning to code using QBasic and building games from type-in code books I founds in libraries. I wanted to re-create this experience so built my own learn-to-code platform, https://akedo.app, inspired by the ease of getting started with QBasic.
> 1. Is the language for this open source? If not, is that planned?
It's a language I designed specifically for this platform and is not currently open source. If it proves popular I'm certainly open to it.
> 2. Is the language compiled or interpreted, and what targets? Is it the execution environment a VM that runs in the browser similar to Scratch?
It's interpreted. To improve the performance at some stage I'd like to compile it directly to JavaScript rather than run it through my intermediate layer.
> 3. Is this a charity or for-profit? If the former, how will it be sustainable (i.e. donations, premium memberships, etc.)? If the latter, what are the plans for monetization?
It's for-profit. I'm planning a freemium model so there would be additional features (when I build them!) and access to more advanced tutorials.
It's a language I designed myself heavily influenced by Python, Lua, and BASIC. I wanted something that was as simple as possible to get started with and could grow with the user.
An entire generation of programmers, including myself, started their programming career with QBasic because it was included on every computer running MS-DOS and was easy to get started.