Forum OpenACS Development: Response to Status update ... will there ever be a beta or final release?

Patrick, I don't think diverting core resources to a Win32 port is
even under discussion here. And most certainly, *nobody* is
suggesting syphoning off resources from producing the final
release.Those of us who are interested in the Windows port
(including particularly me) are just trying to get a sense of what
the options are to see if it's realistic to look for *additional*
resources for this purpose.

But regarding your assertion that you don't lose adopters
because of lack of Windows compatibility (or, to put it slightly
differently, you don't gain adopters that you would have with
Windows compatibility), I can say with great confidence that, at
least in the dotLRN world, you are dead wrong. I know a number
of (fairly large) clients who might consider an OpenACS-based
solution if their Win sysadmins could learn to maintain it but
won't touch a Unix-based solution, no matter how good it is.

Stephen, if you're right that Cygwin doesn't require users to know
Unix, then that *does* sound like potentially the best solution.
What kind of skill set would a hacker need to make the
necessary contributions to cygwin, and how much work might it
be?