Hi, a few quick things about AcaWiki, without replying to bits of individual emails:
Neeru Paharia started it with a small grant from the Hewlett Foundation. Neeru asked John Wilbanks and me to serve on AcaWiki's board (we've all worked together at Creative Commons), and Creative Commons to host and do a little development on the site initially. Hosting cool projects isn't generally something CC can do, but does use MW and SMW for its own site, so made an exception for the time being.
Jodi has also been really involved in the project, and Mako has been so far the only massive contributor. The project has probably been a success solely on the grounds of capturing and explaining some of the knowledge passing through Mako's brain. :-)
Neeru should speak up on disposition of the project, but IMO: * Folding into a WMF project would be by far the best outcome, whatever changes that would ential * Moving to another host is necessary in any case; Referata would probably be great, there was also discussion with Fabricatorz, run by Jon Phillips, another person we've worked with at CC * Making the UI as close to 100% stock MW/Vector as possible is desirable * Keeping SMW, much as I love it, is not crucial, at least to the current featureset