Hey Frank,
I did the same contact with Red Hat some years ago, and it seems like you've got better luck. I didn't know this aplaws thing.
As most as I like OpenACS, I have to agree that we should look for a better technology solution. And the biggest problem for acceptance is AOLServer.
I also don't know if I would use Java, but as they already have something very similar to OpenACS (I didn't check it for compatibility yet) I would choose it for less effort.
Maybe I'll take a deeper look at it sometime.
