I think the post gives you one answer for the second question: "It's Embeddable." I haven't been following the dev list for axkit 2.x but 1.x was very tied to Apache 1.x (I think it used pnotes though it's been a very long time since I looked at axkit). If you wanted to swap to apache 2 or another webserver you where on your own.

I would love to check out Aurora as I have my own xml pipeline applicaiton that runs my site (loosely based on ideas stolen from OpenFrame and others) but the berlios site times out :(