Okay heres my two cents
AOLServer is a Web Server that has an TCL Interface.
PHP is a language that can be used on a wide number of web servers (AOLServer is one of them), thus making code portable across platforms.
There is a big initiative in ArsDigita to make ACS work on a large number of web servers, such as Apache, IIS and others, which means they have to reinvent the wheel as each server does not have the AOLServer API installed.
By doing a port in PHP, means that ACS and OpenACS can automatically be available for all web servers that PHP is supported for, and with the way PHP is going it will be available more widely than AOLServer.
Okay it will take a bit longer to port the API etc to PHP, but it seems a better way to do it than updating a number of AOLServer clones for each Operating System. Plus I know that the PHP community is a lot larger than AOLServers own, where I can get a response on a programming problem quicker and easier and without distain.
PHP wants to be supported and expand, AOL does not want this to happen, they still control a large amount of the source (although they will not admit it). Just take a look @ the Zend Optimizer (AOLServer has had this for a while) it was seen as necessary and it was developed to aid the speed of PHP. What has been the big development in AOLServer over the past couple of years?
