TEG BAINS  PureFTPd is an easy to use, but powerful opensource FTP service. The GUI PureFTPd Manager provides setting a FTP server a snap. It's much better than the lame ftp service Apple includes in MacOS X client or server (including 10.5.x). You can also combine this with Webmin and the PureFTPd plugin for Webmin and administrate the FTP site that way as well.  
(Version 1.7)

TEG BAINS  GlassFish works great as an application server. It has great JavaEE 5.0 support (consider the it is the reference implementation for the specification). It works well on MacOS X and MacOS X Server  
(Version 2.0b58g)

TEG BAINS  If you use MacOS X Server 10.4, you can create a group for your users and use an ACL to grant them all R/W or Full Control.

Giving everyone full access like MacOS 9 is just a bad security idea; even in AppleShare IP you had permissions.

Take the $200 and spend it on upgrading to 10.4 server from earlier versions.

Or just write a one like cron script...  
(Version b308)