Thanks Malte! That's pretty much what I was talking about. I think that in order to push the OpenACS forward, we need to organize ourselves in a more task oriented manner, particularly for development.
For instance, Jerry Asher seems to be quickly becoming the OpenACS search engine guru. (sorry for pointing you out Jerry, but you're doing the best job keeping the community up to date on your system integration efforts) I would love to see Jerry kind of have formal stewardship for this project and give him some kind of stuctured support for his work. Mainly so that all his work can be logged in a doc or a manual that will help the community at large.
Another example is the work that's being done by Yon Derek and others on XML/XSLT (I believe it's Yon, I hope I'm not wrong!). Jerry's work is critical in the short term, but the XML/XSLT work may be very important for future generations of OpenACS. There should be some organizational support for that as well.
This support could come in many different forms; it could be through access to a permanent dev server, by developing some kind of standard documentation strategy or perhaps in the future even with some financial renumeration. The point is that rather than having each person off on their own trying to fold stuff back with their own peculiarities we should establish a standard framework for contributions and recognitions.
When I talk about a foundation, I don't think that I necessarily mean that there ought to be a fund. Rather, a foundation is the best term I know of for talking about a central committee that would oversee all of these efforts. Or perhaps the term Steering Committee or (for you commies) Politboro.
Whatever the term, as we become less and less reliant on aD (and even seem to begin to compete with them, but more on that later) I think we need to work out ways that will sustain the community. Ben, Don, Dan and all the other central and founding figures have done inhuman jobs up till now, but I worry that the momentum of the port will be difficult to maintain.
That being said, please do not think that I advocate over-arching bueracracy.
talli
