Wasn't there a project trying to refactor ACS in Java, which failed badly?
No, not really. It was overdesigned and overly complex attempt at a redesign of ACS 4 (which has some overdesigned and overly complex elements already :)
For instance, you didn't write HTML-based template files ala ACS 4. You wrote XML which got fed through XSLT to create HTML which then got streamed to the user, and whatever the abstract attractiveness of this approach might be, the particular implementation was obtruse and difficult to use by experienced programmers. Designers? Forget it.
That's just one example.
A straightforward rewrite might've been interested, in the sense at least of giving some empirical evidence that a Java-based framework's always going to be a PITA to work with.
One might say it had a similar relationship to ACS 4 as ACS 4 did to ACS 3, with a language change thrown in for fun.
My comment about xotcl simply reflects a belief that AOLServer+tcl+xotcl will be no more popular than AOLserver+tcl.
Well, there's still a pro-Mysql bias in the web world, too. Mysql's gotten better, at least, though the idea of giving up PG would make me sick :)
