Toro
Unicon’s Open Source Channels and Portlets for the uPortal Project
Toro is a set of technologies built by Unicon as part of Academus Portal. These technologies are now open source projects that are deployable on uPortal 2.6.x. Why were these technologies open sourced?
For more project-specific information, view the Toro discussion list.
Toro Projects
Toro Portal
http://code.google.com/p/toro-portal/
This project contains most of the features from the Academus Portal. This includes channels, portlets and various supporting libraries. It contains following JSR-168 portlets:
- Notifications
- Briefcase
- SSO Gateway
- Permission Manager
- Web Content Manager
- Blog
The toro-portal project also contains the Academus theme and the following channels:
- Address Book
- Bookmarks
- Calendar
- Campus Announcements
- Campus News
- Classifieds
- Collaborative Groupware (CMS)
- My Notes
Toro iPac
http://code.google.com/p/toro-ipac/
Toro-iPac contains a utility for importing Groups and Permissions data from external data sources. It currently includes a transform for data in IMS Enterprise format, but can be easily extended to support other formats
Why were these technologies open sourced?
Unicon’s involvement in open source started with the inception of the uPortal project. Unicon created a proprietary product based on a forked version of uPortal that was the framework for an online campus complete with extended functionality. After listening to our market, Unicon has decided to convert functionality as used in our product and contribute it to open source.
We call it the Toro Project, a set of technologies built and donated by Unicon for institutions wanting to extend the functionality of their uPortal installation. Unicon’s channels and portlets are released as Open Source under GNU General Public License.
Beginning with uPortal 2.6, these channels and portlets will be able to integrate into the uPortal framework and provide institutions extended functionality. Implementing the portlets allows you to deliver notifications, file sharing and provide single sign-on capabilities between applications. Channels like address book, announcements and collaborative groupware were built for the portal. Now everyone can make use of Toro and contribute to furthering these technologies.
Creating open source Toro projects means free access and use (under a GNU General Public License) of what used to be proprietary, pay-for code.
Open Source is Best for the Community
Building upon Unicon’s commitment to providing open source services, based on the uPortal project, we present the Toro Project. Now everyone can take advantage of Toro functionality and contribute to furthering the development of the project. The open-sourcing of Toro also bolsters the uPortal community by increasing the pool of tools available to the portal. Toro works on native uPortal 2.6.x, giving uPortal institutions access to a powerful set of portal functionality and enhancements.
Commercial Support Options for Open Source
Unicon offers services and Cooperative Support for open source uPortal and the Toro projects, a superior support program than what was available through the product maintenance program. Making Toro open source opens up those projects to collaboration and development by the entire community - not just Unicon - thereby broadening the participation in improvement and betterment of those projects, to the benefit of our industry.
