I’m a doctor and learned much of what I know about web programming through openACS (So maybe I’m one Dr. openACS :) ), but without .LRN I’m sure I would have lost interest by now. Why, because .LRN held the promise of the future and I hope it still does.
It is not my primary business so I don’t know how other communities work. But as I have stated before, it is my opinion that we should look into the community first. Although, there doesn’t seem to be any support for that, I still felt I had to say it one more time.
Suppose you would buy software from a company that would sell you this toolkit for $20,- , but without support (even a forum), and given the registered amount of bugs in the toolkit, would you buy if you had a goal other than programming you own custom system?
Bugs currently drive even talented programmers away, eventhough they are familiar with openACS.
What if you are the leader of a company with 8000 part-time employees what would you do if things didn’t work out? Hire a new set of full-time developers and not care why the 8000 aren’t productive (anymore)? Would it be useful to have a roadmap or to empty the bugtracker ? I’m not sure, but I feel management is needed more to keep developers than to gain new developers. Investing to keep customers is usually cheaper than to gain customers.
