Status of pylti1.3

[tyler_clair]

I am wondering if those who are building LTI tools for Python do you use pylti.13, a fork, or something else? It has been several years since it has had any updates and I am wondering if its been abandoned or what I am suspecting is that those that do use it have forked it and maintain it internally.

[ColinMurtaugh · Accepted solution]

We've built a number of tools using the django-lti library from UMich which has pylti1p3 as a dependency.  The issue of the (lack of) maintenance of that library has been raised but as far as I know no actions have been taken yet. It's definitely a concern.

--Colin

[tyler_clair]

Thanks Colin for the links that give more context to the current situation. It seems to be a trend among LTI libraries that they get created, most likely for a company, and then the main developer moves on, which is  unfortunate.

For my purposes I use LTI as a means of authentication since all my tools are related to administrative tasks. When those tools are used through a course with LTI its a quick way to implement an RBAC (Role-Based Access Control) model since Canvas takes care of that with course roles. I am leaning towards implementing traditional authentication and authorization (Entra, Google, SSO) solutions as its more sustainable than LTI since there are multiple options available in almost all languages and frameworks.

[ColinMurtaugh]

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@tyler_clair wrote:

 It seems to be a trend among LTI libraries that they get created, most likely for a company, and then the main developer moves on, which is  unfortunate.

Sadly I think this is an issue with open-source software in general! 
Personally I wouldn't give up on LTI (or open-source software 😀) just yet. While LTI is certainly more obscure than, say, SAML or OIDC, it does allow for deeper, more seamless integrations between Canvas and tools. While pylti1p3 hasn't received updates in a while, it does still work and AFAIK it doesn't have any critical bugs.  I do think the community of users of pylti1p3 will need to eventually take it upon ourselves to carry the library forward by forking or transferring ownership.