I have dropped out from the .LRN project for both personal and professional reasons. I plan to get more involved again soon as my new institution begins to use .LRN on a small scale.
A couple of frustrations (only a sample) that I have had with OpenACS and .LRN.
a) Installation. Moodle is easy to install compared to OpenACS/.LRN. This is a typical conversation I have overheard at conferences among educators: "Yeah. Moodle is great. Go to the web site. You can download it and install it so easily." A moron like me can install Moodle in 5 minutes (yes, that's what it takes). By contrast, you have to be a rocket scientist and prepare magical incantations to install OpenACS/.LRN. We talk about building a community among teachers. As a first step, make it easy for an educator to download and install OpenACS/.LRN. The technical community has never regarded this as a priority and I am not sanguine that this will change in the near future. We take manly pride in keeping things as obscure as possible.
b) $$$ Support. This is an area where I admit that the .LRN leadership, principally me, failed miserably. We have large sites using .LRN but are unwilling to contribute even a small amount (e.g. $1,000) of funding towards the project. If they were using Blackboard their licensing alone would be in the six figures ($100,000). I was never able to figure out how to turn that around. We have always had to rely on the voluntarism of the OpenACS community and one or two institutions bankrolling most of the development. That was and is still not sustainable.
