I want to reply to Tom and Steve, but don't want to tangent this thread any further. Its been a great discussion, and if people have further questions, please start a new thread or email me.
Tom: I think we are misunderstanding each other and I should have added some more context. Really all I'm saying is that a goal is a necessary condition for organizing an open-source community. ArsDigita never really supplied that goal for ACS4, and I suspect that is one reason why we were frustrated. Supporting multiple databases is a great goal, and the work that OpenACS is doing is great! There is more I could write considering the theory of this, but I'll save it for another time.
Steve: That is correct. We identified a set of business goals that required the redesign.
