by Dave Perry.
Whilst I have no knowledge of fc, I believe the other two modules in your first list are reasonable ones to be farmed out for updates. And that there is probably next to use of nntp for authentication anymore (if indeed there is/was).
We use Shibboleth here for eResources, and I did successfully get it working on a test site with moodle (the Service Provider side, which moodle needs, is much much easier than configuring an Identity Provider!). So whatever route you go down with this, I'd be willing to test new major releases for people as long as I can free up some time (I run our IdPs).