Other members of the OpenACS community have thought about going into the AOLserver core team (ACT). I was nominated to be on the ACT, but declined to go forward (will explain why in a second). Dan Wickstrom was nominated as well, but (understandably) declined because he has already gotten too much on his plate (nsjava, openfts and related utilities, dotLRN TAB, family, etc.)
Like Simon, I originally thought OpenACS needed someone in the ACT. I have changed my mind after an e-mail exchange I had with Dan Wickstrom. While that wouldn't hurt, I don't think it's a necessity. The other candidates to the ACT are keen of OpenACS, especially Scott Goodwin, and most importantly, have shown to be good listeners and leaders.
I declined going forth with trying to get into the ACT because right now I simply don't think that, at the moment, I have what the experience required for such an undertaking. Those in the ACT need to be intimately familiar with AOLserver and/or Tcl C internals. They will receive patches and feature requests from the community and will need to evaluate and rank them for inclusion into the server or not.
AOLserver is a remarkable piece of software, but it only is so because of the few good minds behind it. The ACT will help to make sure it only improves.
