[sakai-pmc] Executive Summary Sakai 10

[Neal Caidin]

Hi PMC,

In addition to the detail release notes for Sakai 10, with a list of 
every feature and contribution we can find and add, I think it would be 
good to have an "Executive Summary" and an "Acknowledgements" area on 
the release notes [1].   I've started these sections and pasting in this 
email for your convenience. If anyone is a talented copy writer/editor, 
happy to accept the help!

Sakai 10 Overview

Sakai 10 builds on the solid work of the Sakai 2.9.3 release. We have 
two new tool contributions, better support for audio and video using 
HTML 5, infrastructure improvements, about 50 security fixes, 
performance improvements, a number of new features, and close to 2,000 
fixes! Highlights include, but are not limited to:

  * Signup tool, previously a Contrib tool, is now part of Sakai core
  * Delegated Access tool, previously a Contrib tool, is now part of
    Sakai core
  * LTI - first LMS with support for LTI 2.0
  * Peer graded Assignments
  * Group Assignments
  * Test and Quizzes has new question types: Calculated question and
    Extended Matching Items, improved precision on numeric answers, a
    new accordion-style interface for quiz setup.
  * Lessons toolbar has been redesigned and simplified, better support
    for embedded Audio and video, new Table of Contents feature, support
    for inline use of polls, and better overall look and feel.
  * Resources has support for drag and drop adding of files from desktop
    for all browsers, and support for folder drag and drop in Chrome.
  * Student pages can be owned by a group as well as individuals
  * Syllabus Tool updated with a new interface, bulk update of syllabus
    items, accordion view, and better handling of link migration
  * Gradebook added support for extra credit.
  * Distributed Cacheing provides support for JCache/JSR-107 which
    includes improvement to the default cache sizes and better control
    by configuration. Session replication to failover from one server to
    another without losing session data. Overall provides better
    performance for large Sakai installation (though please note that
    these features are not turned on by default OOTB).
  * Security Updates. The Sakai community fixed about 50 security issues
    including various XSS issues and CSRF issues.  AntiSamy is on by
    default in Sakai 2.9.3 and Sakai 10. AntiSamy ensures that user
    supplied HTML/CSS is in compliance within an application's rules.
  * Student Success Portal - new integration available.
  * Java - added support for JDK 7.x. JDK 8.x support is in process of
    being added.
  * Sakai technical organization simplified. Reincorporated many of the
    "Indies" to make management of Sakai releases and reporting of
    issues easier.


Sakai 10 Acknowledgements

  * Yale for the contribution of the Signup Tool to Sakai core.
  * Rutgers for ongoing development of the Lessons tool.
  * S2U (Spanish speaking users group, a consortium of several
    institutions) for making many contributions to the Sakai 10 release,
    especially fixing security issues.
  * Unicon as the lead and primary contributor for the new Sakai
    cacheing framework
  * Longsight for conversion of Audio recording from Java applet to HTML
    5 based
  * Sakai documentation group for creating brand new Sakai 10 help
    documentation and to the Apereo Foundation to fund licensing of the
    software used to support the effort.
  * Asahi Net for contribution of the new ElasticSearch engine for the
    Sakai search tool and as primary contributor for the Resources
    Drag-and-Drop feature.
  * Oxford for a new Contrib Search tool - Solr
  * University of Michigan for CSS contributions to Sakai 10 and in Lessons


Questions about these sections
Is the Sakai 10 Overview too long? Should it be more in prose rather 
than bullet points?

There are some other cool features I know about, but didn't include 
(because it was getting to be a long list!). Examples Project Keitai 
[probably this one needs to be up in that list], some fixes to Forums 
like Ranking / Moving a thread to a different topic/ showing topics with 
unread messages, Messages tool has an improved interface, Joinable 
Groups, Video chat is now in core (though off by default), CK Editor 
improvements including Audio recording, .. and I could probably dig up 
more candidates for the "summary".

Can I start with this as a good starting set of Acknowledgements and 
Crowdsource it? Maybe I should put it in alphabetical order of 
contributor so I don't get into trying to rank the importance of the 
contributions?

Is it okay to say about 2,000 fixes? I count 1750, which seems like an 
incredible amount of Jiras that went into Sakai 10, but suspect it was 
partially due to the Sakai 2.9 delays and fixes aggregating [2]

[1] Sakai 10 draft release notes (still in progress) - 
https://confluence.sakaiproject.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=86245732
[2] over 1750 issues fixed - use JQL - fixVersion in 
versionMatches("10.*") and resolution = Fixed

Thanks,
Neal


-- 
Neal Caidin
Sakai Community Coordinator
Apereo Foundation
neal.caidin at apereo.org
Skype me! (but let me know in advance for the first interaction) - nealkdin

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