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We are not in the business of building a toolkit. We are in the business of building quality websites. That is what we get paid for. We are more than happy to add our improvements to the toolkit in the process, and to employ the improvements made by others.

I'm sorry we can't afford to be idealistic in this respect. But the toolkit didn't get to where it is simply because of idealism. A lot of money went into making it what it is. A lot of money goes into the improvements we make.

We're not super-rich people, and we're not really looking to be. We're just looking to use our skills to make great sites and earn good money.

I would love to be more of a part of OpenACS. I think they're doing great stuff, and I hope our work furthers the effort. But we can't devote the resources we'd like to to it.

Anyway, stay tuned for some kick-ass enhancements, including an ACS that plays well with Oracle 9i, and utilities to migrate from 8i to 9i.

There have been a number of instances where we've tried HARD to release our code in a venue where it will have good impact. I'd point you to the scramble that originated when we suggested to aD that we host CVS and bboards for ACS 3.4 about a year ago. People like Don and Ben were dismissive until they realized there was real demand for someone to continue to maintain that codebase. They then scrambled to have openACS take control. End result -- no result. Too confusing for aD, us and openACS to get something out the door.

We have the same problems any growing company does that's self funded -- we don't have unlimited resources to throw at community interaction, support, etc. When aD wanted to provide that community support, we released all our code through their channels. That's no longer a good venue to release our code, and so we're revamping our developer section to provide just this functionality to the community. But, it takes time.

If you want a copy of our most recent ACS, just drop me a line, or info at ybos dot net, someone will send you our source tree with enhancements. At any rate, there's no reason to be rude. I wasn't rude to you.

Ironically we've done about six times more ACS work than ArsDigita has done this year, including beating them out for the Children's Hospital at Montefiore project, a really cool project which put our site, based on the ACS at every bed in the Children's Hospital, next to Plasma screens and wireless keyboards. We're stable, and growing, and have never had an employee leave the company since we started in 1998.

Also, we've been enhancing the ACS-Tcl steadily for the last year; it's a totally different project than what Ars Digita has for download -- more stable, faster, better features, etc. OpenACS is nice, but it's still all alpha code. And if you think their 4.X product works with Postgres, you haven't read very carefully. They've been releasing OpenACS 4.X sites on Oracle this year.

I'm the president of ybos, and yesterday felt like I was living a case study at HBS. "You own a growing boutique firm. Your major partner/sometime competitor was just bought out by a billion dollar company. What do you do?"

Why reporters hate PR flacks so much they'd rather deal with lawyers:

1. PR flacks get in the way. I'd rather pick up the phone and talk directly to the subject of the story, not his flack, definitely not the flack's secretary, and absolutely not the flack's secretary's voice mail. I just want to ask a few questions. I don't need a scheduled appointment and a canned presentation.
2. Just because I drink your free beer doesn't mean we're buddies. You think you're going to shame me out of writing an expose on your client when it might be the best scoop I ever got?
3. In-house flacks are even worse than agencies. The minute they sense you're planning to do anything short of a glowing report on their boss, they do everything possible to shield him from you.
4. Flacks for government agencies are the worst of all. Nothing will get done the same day you request it. The worst I ever dealt with was a flack who controlled access to a lot of government officials. I learned later that her boss didn't like my publication and had instructed her to delay all my requests until my deadline had passed to make sure my competition got the story first.
5. Lawyers are quick-witted enough to realize that once a journalist has decided to do a story on a subject, there's no backing off. They'll give you a quote right off the cuff without worrying about some long-range "strategic marketing plan." Besides, it's easier to translate legalese than marketese.

(Note to Ybos: blueberry, lilac, honeydew? Is that anything like blue, purple, green? How about including some color swatches in your poll so we can see exactly what you're talking about?)

Since they already have a section on their website: "How to plan a successful public website".

• What's Ars' outlook on industry partnerships going forward? We're too small still to do the projects you guys want, (million+/year) and I don't think we'll be there for at least a year or two. I believe that making partnerships, and building relationsips with companies like ybos is important for you as you go forward: more alternative service providers gain you mindshare in the same way that giving away a year of free training at Ars U does.
• How do you feel about ACS/Pg? Using Oracle is a major blow to doing smaller projects, obviously. Also, I know the state of Postgres two years ago, so I don't blame you for the switch to Oracle from Illustra, but do you have intention to backport to a more open database architecture, or 'bless' Ben Adida and co's work on the ACS/Pg? I think what appeals to me about ACS/Pg is not Postgres (rather obviously), but the more open nature of the development -- Ybos has begun releasing useful ACS modules to the public, and enhancing some slow-moving Ars ones, and it's a medium-level frustration that they'll never get rolled into your toolkit, or that we have to develop side by side. (for example, bryan che kindly lent us his data model early for the events module, but we developed about half a module under his data model before you released the newer module, and we scratched it and started over.) This leads to my final question:
• Do you have thoughts on the relative openness of the ACS development? Would you consider an 'inner circle' development model that would let confirmed developers check code in and out of the development releases? I think that you'd see some significant benefits. I ask about this rather than a 'true' open source system because I'm betting you'd say "no way" to an aggressively open model. I probably would, too.