Obviously, if there aren't any resources then a Windows port
won't be done. I'm asking because I think it an important enough
issue to think about whether I might be able to scare up a
sponsorship for a Windows port. Regarding the issue of whether
it is important, Patrick, there are many, many organizations that
are still unabashedly Windows-only. They believe (rightly or
wrongly) that maintaining skillsets in only one OS platform keeps
down their total cost of ownership. This applies even to
universities; just because the comp sci department as some
Unix boxes doesn't mean that the (typically more conservative) IT
support departments that run the various university computing
systems are also supporting Unix (or Macs). Not having a viable
Windows port is definitely a barrier to broader adoption. Having a
solution that requires sysadmins to know Unix (i.e., Cygwin)
doesn't really solve the problem.
If there are no resources then there are no resources. It may very
well be that the community of current users (and, more
importantly, the subset of that community that actually
contributes code) doesn't care that much about whether
Windows-only organizations would consider an
OpenACS-based solution (or believes that such organizations
might be disinclined to consider OpenACS even if it were
available on Windows). But I think it's a mistake to believe that
the lack of Windows support does not represent a very
significant barrier to adoption in a very broad range of
organizations.
