I think there are some issues with making the primary focus for all OpenACS activities be dotLRN. For one thing it's very big and very complicated hence much harder to develop for
than simply writing packages on acs-core, it's quite rigid in
the site structure which makes it unsuited to things outside
the course management/education market.
I personally think the way forward is to take it out of the
university and the reason I think that is that the innovative
things I think draw people in are not coming from dotLRN.
I think things like Lors, the assessment package, etc are
important to the success of dotlrn in the "Enterprise Level University Service" market but your run of the mill student just isn't going
to care. They are not going to set up a website to run their
own little university or deliver learning objects but they might set up a website to
run their blog and maybe a photo album and other things, but
it might get to the point where OpenACS is really a high-octane alternative to gallery and moveable type
at which point I think we would be more attractive to
people getting started.
