Forum OpenACS Q&A: Response to Future directions for OpenACS
we would like to serve non-profit organizations with OpenACS; not just with community websites but with database applications as well. we want not just use the toolkit, but to expand it as well with NPO- specific software. we're looking to leverage OpenACS not just as a free toolkit but as a real open source system.
but we don't expect that every organization that could use the system can afford to pay us or others for installation and administration. so we'd like to build a community of volunteer sysadmins that might host an org's system on a kitchen table server or something analogous to that.
since for every one person that has heard of AOLserver there seems to be a million pretty familiar with Apache, we're leaning to developing our OpenACS contributions with Apache as the preferred server. in fact, we're even excited about the port to IIS since so many orgs already have the darkside's systems running and are hesitant to abandon legacy apps.
so we're not totally agnostic to the coming server war - i mean - debate. we don't expect to be building systems that demand tolerance up to 28,000 hits/sec. (if we did have to build such a system i would expect it would provide so much revenue i would volunteer to crawl into their server and serve pages myself.) so apache would do just fine for our needs.
however, i'm worrying myself that by preferring a platform other than that of the community's mainstream, problems will arise concering the continuity of the toolkit. i'm an advocate of not fixing what's broke, especially if it's a waste of resources. in other words, i think doing a port to perl, python and even java would be a waste of time if it distracts from improving and building upon what already exists.
which brings me to what i'm afraid is getting lost a bit and what i think _is_ the future: OpenACS 4.X. Don already admitted this morning that the effort is behind schedule. (which, btw, is an example of why i think this community is so strong. people here are extremely competent, but more importantly people are honest and treat one another with respect.)
but to be honest, we've been in the starting blocks waiting for the gun to fire for a while now. nobody deserves blame for that, of course, because we were at the mercy of aD, PG7.1 and enough open time for Don, Ben and everyone else to sit and start. but now that there has been a commitment to doing it and there seems to be many, many people eager to help i'd like to see a bit more transparency or organization, i.e. something like what aD did on acs40.arsdigita.com.
as far as forking the OpenACS to include alternative languages or platforms, i think it would be a real waste of the community hours. so far we've been kinda beholden to aD as far as new developments on these fronts, but is that so bad? they are getting paid to do that stuff, and they haven't _totally_ screwed up yet.;)
hope things are going well with everybody.
talli
