Alfred,
AFAIK OpenACS isn't dependent on qmail. At least qmail isn't required to run OpenACS. The notification package comes to mind as a packages that can handle incoming emails if qmail is installed. But even then one can easily adjust the processing procs to work with different MTAs.
Still, replacing qmail with an MTA that is actually being maintained is a GOOD idea.
I've been working on some RPMs myself. Including daemontools which I still prefer over inittab. Daemontools doesn't have to break /etc/init.d/rc conventions either. Writing a service script for a service under daemontools control is a snap. Place the script in /etc/init.d, run chkconfig (on Fedora/RedHat) et voila!
One of the biggest advantages of daemontools is the ability to give ordinary users (some) control over the service. Another big win is multilog which prevents log files from filling up the harddrive.
Most components can be made available as RPMs quite easily. Unfortunately, Fedora/RedHat comes with a single threaded Tcl version. Depending on your system configuration, replacing the standard Tcl package with a multi threaded version might lead to dependecy conflicts as some packages require a specific Tcl version.
Once solution to this issue to is release the multi threaded Tcl package under a different name, e.g. tcl-threaded or tcl-aolserver.
On the subject of RPMs I would like to put a vote in for individual packages for each aolserver module.
/Bart
