LDN - Luminis Developer Network

This post will probably get me in trouble - but its been a bad day so I'll just wait for the emails and phone calls.

To fork off of this post ( http://www.lumdev.net/?q=node/1180 ) regarding the new oracle portal initiatives announced at Summit - I came across these 2 tid bits regarding Mark Boyd and Jan Nielsen while searching for something - can't even remember what now I'm so frazzeld -

Mark : https://list.unm.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0703&L=jasig-dev&T=0&F=&S=&P=3594

Jan : https://list.unm.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0703&L=jasig-dev&T=0&F=&S=&P=3594

Summary - they're both leaving SungardHE to pursue other things. For those of you that don't know - both Mark and Jan originally worked for Campus Pipeline way back and have been pivotal in the Luminis development. They are hugely active in the uPortal community and their knowledge of uPortal has been integral in the development of Luminis as we know it up through IV. More than that - they know about and respect LDN and (I think) it also has an influence on the Luminis product.

With the oracle portal initiative announcement and the questions posed in here I have some questions of my own - hopefully SungardHE can respond to -

• Doesn't it seem odd that 2 chief engineers both decided to leave? what's going on at Sungard and what's in store for us as clients now that they're gone?
• I'm not big into the uPortal Community - but does SunGard have any other talent actively engaged in the uPortal community? If not - are they looking or is that why they're looking to oracle portal in the future?
• I'm sure there has to be a team of other Luminis developers in Salt Lake, but I don't know them, they're not active here (although they may be registered), or at Summit (that I know of), are they going to have the expertise and knowledge of the platform to continue its development?
• are they as experienced with uPortal / JAVA / Luminis / Banner integration etc ? These two had the answers and could spout off stackTraces if you needed them to. Ok, that's not totally true, but they will go off on various uPortalish rantings in what seems to be a foreign language that almost always loose me.
• And as I was typing that - I had a thought. My wife sells Avon - and called their customer service last night and she asked where the guy was - New Delhi - INDIA. We laughed because she was just in India a few weeks ago. Sorry back to my ranting - What if they go the route of everyone else and go off shore for development? Do we care where its developed as long as the product improves? After all it doesn't have a Made in the USA sticker on it.
• To piggyback on a point mentioned in the other article I referenced above, will they ramp up techs and support when oracle portal comes out?

My parting thought is that LDN will live on and continue to be an influence on the growth of the product (whatever platform), and I hope whomever fills in / replaces / is dumped on has the respect for LDN that both Mark and Jan had.

On behalf of the LumDev community - best of luck and we'll miss you both.

let the phone calls begin....

- Jon