The future of App Inventor

I'm new to App Inventor and I have a few questions that I couldn't find the in General Chat.  Before I embark on an application, is there any information on the following:

1. Longevity - how long will App Inventor be around? Is it an MIT project, is there a risk it could disappear without notice?

2. For Profit - I haven't seen anything that says I cannot create a "for profit" app, am I missing something? Are there risks doing this?

3. Donation/Contribution - If I am profitable, is there an opportunity to support App Inventor (donation, subscription, etc)?

--

1) it will be around for ever... and in case MIT drops the project, you always can run your own personal server, see here Overview: Different App Inventor Distributions and Versions

2) you can do that, the only thing is, you can't protect your app, for example using app licensing https://developer.android.com/google/play/licensing/index.html

3) let's see, if someone from MIT can answer this question...

--

To elaborate on Taifun's response:

1. We publish App Inventor as open source code available on GitHub. This allows anyone to take it and build off of it, and in the unfortunate situation where we were to ever need to discontinue the project it would still be possible for individuals to continue to build/update apps. This was done intentionally in order to protect users of App Inventor from this very situation.

2. You can publish your app via the Google Play Store using the instructions Taifun linked. I also understand it to be possible to publish via the Amazon store as well, but I've never tried it. When you build an APK you can do whatever you like with it and we place no licensing restrictions on you. You also maintain all rights to your app.

3. Currently, you can make a gift to support App Inventor via the MIT Giving site. This link will prepopulate the form with the App Inventor Fund. We are working on additional mechanisms to support MIT App Inventor and will announce those in the future.

Please let us know if you have any further questions.

--

Thanks so much!

--