the titles are tradition but not a rule. it's called 196 because it's a descendent of 195. why was it called 195? 195 was created by a college student as a social experiment, and 195 was their room number. they shut down 195 when they graduated, so 196 was created
GPL licenses place no restriction on commercial use. They just say that the code has to be shared and free to modify and redistribute. Mastodon don't charge because that makes little to no sense in a federated model
...who thought that was a good idea