Trying to measure "give back" is inappropriate for a project like this. The reasons are lengthy and deserving of a separate thread (if necessary). Anyone who *expects* direct return from contributing (and collaborating with others) here needs to find a sponsor of some kind, so that they can find satisfaction in measures of their own situation by their own standards.
now to the topic at hand..
These projects do not appear to have mission statements. (Openacs has been compared to them at times).
http://cocoon.apache.org
http://zope.org
http://plone.org
Bruce's idea (of creating multiple statements) works for Apache. Their mission statement may be the closest existing mission statement to something for the OpenACS core project:
The mission of the APR project is to create and maintain software
libraries that provide a predictable and consistent interface to
underlying platform-specific implementations. The primary goal is
to provide an API to which software developers may code and be
assured of predictable if not identical behaviour regardless of
the platform on which their software is built, relieving them of
the need to code special-case conditions to work around or take
advantage of platform-specific deficiencies or features.[1]
As Apache API is to OpenACS, so maybe Apache projects are to OpenACS packages or vertical apps, such as dotLRN, Project Manager, dotWrk. Apache projects are required to have their own mission statement (among other things) for support on the apache website.[2]
1. http://www.apache.org/foundation/records/minutes/2003/board_minutes_2003_03_19.txt
2. http://www.apache.org/dev/project-creation.html
