That statement is outdated and confusing indeed.
After some initial tests done in Java, we decided to go the PHP way.
Main reasons why we used PHP:
- Lighter on the server: you can run OpenGoo on the cheapest hosting servers (6 US$/month)
- Popular in the Open Source community: Most Open Source projects we admire are done in PHP, and many developers know PHP, and we want the community to contribute
- Many OpSource projects to hack into OGoo: the old ActiveCollab, FCKEditor, Trimspreadsheets (while it lasted),
There is a great -kind of Open Source- product done in Java:
Zimbra. It has many of the features OpenGoo offers. Maybe that's the right product for you?
We estimate that, on the future, there might be some plug-ins that could need a JVM (we might use OpenOffice.org as a server for converting different document formats). But for now, we want to keep OpenGoo small, and agile.