Well, the docs are supposed to be about governance ...
you'll notice an amazing similarity between Ben's description of the kernel and Al's. That's due to cut and paste writing on Al's part.
Technically dotLRN does some portal management of its own through the applet mechanism (adding portlets to pages) so saying "portals management" is part of the kernel doesn't say that the new portals package won't go into OpenACS. Nor does it say it will. In fact it doesn't particularly say anything about the new portals package, only that dotLRN does portals management.
How's that for beating around the bush :)
As to where the new portals package lands that's really a technical decision, I think all are agreed that at this level we're looking to do the right thing. IMO the new portals package should replace the old portals package in the standard OpenACS release but such a discussion should take place in another thread.
