Well, this is pretty much everything I've wanted to hear for many months. Time for me to lay down the war club and to roll up my sleeves and help make this work. Well, after I get back from banding hawks in Nevada for all of next month, that is!
Ironically, my entire motivation for porting over the bboard and to start working on porting other pieces of the ACS to Postgres a year ago last month was exactly the same motivation as is held by the ArsDigita Foundation - to make the ACS toolkit available for not-for-profits who can't afford Oracle but who want to build significant websites. It has been only recently that I've considered using OpenACS for client sites.
So hearing that aD shares my goal of making it possible for non-profits to build complex websites without breaking the bank also motivates me. Very much.
Some background - I served on the Board of Directors of Portland Audubon, the second largest chapter of the National Audubon Society for over twelve years. I also donate one to two months of my time nearly every year as a field biologist for HawkWatch, Int'l for the aforementioned Nevada gig, and have been on the Steering Committee of Partners in Flight's OR/WA chapter as well.
Conservation is in my blood, as is service to non-profits. OpenACS, whether on Postgres or InterBase, will enable savvy non-profits to put together great sites (and savviness is much easier to come by than money in grass roots organizations like those I work with).
I'll echo Ben's comments regarding 4.0. it will be a great improvement, and porting it will be a lot of work.
Worthwhile work!
Great news, Ben.
