Thanks for the background Eugene. That is indeed an interesting read (if anything else but on the Apache Foundation's process). Anyway, 1.25mb download for some Javascript code is indeed 'rich'.
I was, however, transfixed by their pretty GUI widgets, those pretty, pretty GUI widgets (treeview, datagrid, accordion menu, etc. all nicely rounded and styled). Anyway, I'll eagerly await to see what you and your fellow Django/AJAX gurus decide on for the Django AJAX framework and maybe try to emulate/copy the Zimbra widgets if I do decide to go ahead and implement the Django platform. Cheers, peter