[cle-release-team] Proposal: Replace News tool with Simple RSS Portlet

[Steve Swinsburg]

*Proposal*

1. Remove News tool.

2. Add Simple RSS Portlet.

*Rationale*

The current News tool in Sakai is an ageing tool that has difficulty
rendering some RSS feeds. In addition there is little community support for
this tool [1].

A contrib tool does exist called News Feeds which has previously been
proposed as a replacement for the News tool [2]. However there are several
issues with this tool:
The main developer is no longer active in the Sakai community, having moved
on several years ago [3];
There are bugs which are unfixable using the current code due to libraries
no longer existing [4];
It uses a deprecated version of its UI framework and would require a major
refactor to bring it up to date [ibid].

Due to these issues, this tool is not appropriate for inclusion.

Therefore, it is proposed that the News tool is replaced by the Simple RSS
Portlet [5].
The portlet was developed in 2011 and run as part of a number of university
portals since its release.

This tool renders all forms of RSS and Atom feeds and is completely
configurable for both the instructor and user. The tool has been through a
number of releases and is fully internationalised, supporting multiple
languages out of the box.

The portlet was originally designed to work within uPortal, however as
Sakai is a JSR-168 compliant portlet container, it runs exactly the same as
the new Web Content tool in trunk, which is also a JSR-168 portlet.

The code for this portlet is currently on Github [6].

The Simple RSS Portlet is developed and maintained by Steve Swinsburg.

*Where to from here*

Read the rationale above. A material objection (indicated by a -1 and
accompany reasoning) raised by a Sakai PMC member will block this proposal.
 Other opinions are welcome, indeed encouraged. Silence equals
consent. Discussion
should be on the sakai-dev list unless of a private nature in which case I
am happy to correspond off list. Objections must be received before Friday
22nd November 2013.

*Links*
1.
https://jira.sakaiproject.org/issues/?jql=Project%20%3D%20%22Sakai%20CLE%22%20AND%20component%20in%20(%22News%20(RSS)%22%2C%20%22News%20Feeds%22)%20AND%20resolution%20in%20(%22No%20Resources%22%2C%20Unresolved%2C%20Incomplete)
2. https://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/NFS/Home
3.
http://collab.sakaiproject.org/pipermail/sakai-dev/2010-October/009813.html
4. https://jira.sakaiproject.org/browse/NFS-61
5. https://wiki.jasig.org/display/PLT/Simple+RSS+Portlet
6. https://github.com/steveswinsburg/simple-rss-portlet
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