Forum OpenACS Development: Re: Apache support critical
Presumably people keep bugging us to improve our applications ... forums, bloggers, etc ... and the Sakai people want to improve theirs because people use them. If all people want is LORS management and a gradebook, they don't really need either Sakai or .LRN.
The reason why people will look at .LRN kludged on top of the Sakai framework to any degree that requires integration with the Sakai datamodel as being interim has to do with administration. Professors and students (and presumably you) won't give a shit.
System administrators will.
Remember the first post in this thread? Talli complaining he's locked out of a potential major site because they won't even consider installing software that uses a webserver other than Apache. The reason here is that sysadmins by their very nature loath being forced to support additional software.
That would hold true for anyone administering a Sakai installation. Some might be willing to live in a kludged-up world, most would reject it if they have anything to say about it and will work hard to move past such a solution if they're forced to adopt it. In some universities IT departments have real power. Look at Al. Look at Sloan.
As far as integration issues go, in general we do much more integration than was true when you were involved in the community. You might check out some of the stuff that's been done.
And, again, take this up with the .LRN board. If any level of integration with uPortal or Sakai takes place, it will take place because the .LRN non-profit or one of its member universities funds it. It is really not an OpenACS issue. If the .LRN folk decide to fund it, the implementation will undoubtably be done by contractors in this community but it's not likely to be funded out of any of our volunteers free time.
Fundamentally it's a marketing decision. I personally don't see much value in the message that results from trying to chase Sakai. My own personal experience with my compiler technology firm leads me to think that if you start chasing a runaway bandwagon from behind ... it's hard to catch it and jump on.
From the technical point of view I'm neutral, and I suspect that's true of most of us in the mainstream OpenACS community. The people trying to market .LRN are the people who need to hear and evaluate your message. If it will help them to market the product and they feel it is worth funding, you'll find plenty of interest in the OpenACS community. If not ... why would we care?
