Migrate away from feature module (easy!)

The feature module became something of a disaster. There is a real small number of people, who have access to edit the components of http://drupal.org/features (the famous node number #2) - only super-power administrators. And due to how the module is written, even then, the admin link is only shown in the sidebar block on http://drupal.org/admin not in the page itself. The node itself is empty and the feature list is generated to that from handbook.module (a submodule to drupalorg.module) with

function handbook_nodeapi(&$node, $op = 'view', $teaser = FALSE, $page = FALSE) 
{
  if ($op == 'view' && $page) {
    $extra = '';
    switch ($node->nid) {
      case 2: // Features
        $extra = feature_listing();
        break;
     // ...
    }
    $node->content['body']['#value'] .= $extra;
  }
}

So basically, the contents of feature_listing() is the page. There is nothing else provided by feature module, just this very limited, and structure enforced features page. There is no way to include flashy videos or images right on this page, but only to link other pages and images on the site. No wonder the information here is awfully outdated. And I mean it.

The features page starts with collaborative book as most important feature, or Open source is a feature(?!) or "an external authentication source [can be used] like Jabber, Blogger, LiveJournal or another Drupal website" - information which is highly outdated, all these models were in core but then removed from core through the years. Also, screenshots for features like versioning point to Firebird(!) browser shots of Drupal 4.3(!!) Serious! http://drupal.org/node/3927 And this page is linked prominently from our front page blurb! It is!

So we should put an end to this madness once and for all and put this page to the hands of the docs team for massaging. It is about time. Getting rid of this obscure feature module also helps the upgrade to Drupal 6.

So how to get rid of that:

1. Copy the output of feature_listing() into the node itself (I could do this).
2. Remove the three related lines from the handbook.module (I could not do this due to file permissions set on the module).
3. Disable, delete and forget feature module. (The first two again I could not do due to file permissions).

I think this is an extremely easy migration path, so there should be no reason, we don't do this as soon as possible.