The more I read, the more pissed off I get ...
We know the answers because we just changed our name to Open
Architecture Community System. OpenACS is an architecture for
online communities. Thus, as an architecture, it defines how various
pieces of code are going to interact with one another. It does not
define all the features that will ever be part of an OpenACS
installation. It defines the object system, the permission system,
the package system, the request processor. It does not define the UI
or specific end-user (forum, calendar) functionality.
"Being part of OpenACS" should simply mean that you:
1. adhere to the OpenACS base APIs,
2. build a compliant, good-citizen package, and
3. generally follow the OpenACS development style guidelines.
But does your package have to be distributed with the OpenACS distribution to be "part of OpenACS?"
No. In fact, going down this road is dangerous: it creates bloat in
the core distribution of OpenACS, complicates the learning curve, and
generally makes OpenACS far too monolithic.
Our current thinking is leading OpenACS 4.x down the monolithic, un-modular 3.x path.
This is a total misrepresentation of current thinking.
