"To be just a little more revealing, the conversation I had was with the CTO of one of the major p2p service providers. This was a site that got many millions of hits per day with a very complex web architecture built around and behind Apache."
This is an example of a situation where Apache integration via (say) mod_proxy makes sense from a technical POV. No one rationally expects to avoid the need to integrate with the existing architecture in this place.
As far as getting "first looks" from people who are simply put off by our non-standard software stack ... is Apache+AOLserver+Tcl+Postgres really going to appear more standard than AOLserver+Tcl+Postgres? I just find that hard to believe. They're still going to say "Ugh, AOLserver" and "Ugh, Tcl". Postgres is no longer, I think, much of a barrier, it's well-respected and gets lots of ink theses days.
So pushing for an integration solution and touting our ability to do so makes perfect sense ... but will do little to overcome resistance to "non-standard" software. IMO.
That's why I think making it possible for people to try it out with as close to zero effort as possible is more important for getting "first looks" than Apache integration. Our Knoppix disks, graphical Windows installer, installers for common Linux systems, etc. If we could afford it, I'd say just put one of those cute Mac Minis on their desk and say "just plug it into your network" to give folks their first hands-on experience.
It sounds like the .LRN board agrees with part of that, at least, since Al mentions installers as being an identified board priority (and they did not get that from me, I was not part of the discussion).
