Ola,
I think curriculum would define the operations and for a package to "work" with curriculum, it would have to provide an implementation of that operation for its objects.
I am probably not the best person to explain it.
Are you talking about the search service contract for new and forums? They should work pretty much the same. The only difference is that forums has to define the triggers to insert items into the search queue because it does not use the content repository. News uses the content repository and doesn't need the triggers.
