Responding to Don, I agree and consulting organization would be best to be part of the overall OpenACS framework. But before jumping on a solution I am thinking about the issues that have come up.
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<LI> I need to learn to use html tags for quotes.... ok not relevant to this discussion
<LI>There are an increasing amount of developers who are trying to establish consulting services using the OpenACS toolkit. It would be good to have common principles and practices and a presence so that we dont have to take VC money to grow big enough to be taken seriously. The "franchise" concept comes to mind as a VERY successful model to scaling business through common procedures and tools and umbrella marketing etc.
<LI>We have increasing number of people wishing to participate who come from different backgrounds and with different skillsets. We need a way to welcome these people into the project and provide them ways to make useful contributions.
<LI>We have larger numbers of developers who are updating or adding code features. We need to be able to review and absorb these code changes more efficiently. The original OpenACS project was hosted at SourceForge and allowed greater developer access than the current model. Should we revisit this? How to we test and QA and coordinate patches and updates as they come in?
<LI>More diverse topics not directly related to OpenACS development are coming up as we picke up more people, yet the site does not allow new topics to be added.. maybe we should revisit this.
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Personally I think we should find some consensus of what the vision for OpenACS project is and where it is going. The think the founders have a major say in this with input from the community at large. Our original vision was to be able to run ACS without spending a fortune on Oracle. I think it is time to revisit that.. like revisiting a business plan.
cheers
Jamie
