If we can use uPortal + dotLRN, it would be a glorious combination for a variety of reasons.
First, uPortal has a lot of traction in the academic community and is gaining significant momentum. Some of the institutions involved include Yale and Princeton. There are also certain problems that they are attacking and there could be a nice division of labor.
Second, this also gives dotLRN / OpenACS a good solution to the vexing marketing question about Java vs TCL. When we started down this road, I remember having a conversation about this with Ben. His answer, which made eminent sense to me, was "Why port everything from TCL to Java? What's the sense of that, especially if there is a way in which we can utilize Java classes/servlets from within OpenACS." I think he was referring to ns_java. So, here it is. Here is a Java app/solution that we might wish to take advantage of. From a marketing perspective this will be phenomenal, because we no longer have to say it's either/or (TCL or Java). Here's a Java implementation and it's just part of the architecture.
If the community and the dotLRN Technical Advisory Board agree that this is a good way to go, I can try to secure some funding for people to begin working on this.
