David,
The main reason I put the profiles app in capra/settings.py in the
first place is because settings like these:
AUTH_PROFILE_MODULE = 'capra.profiles.Profile'
REGISTRATION_OPEN = False
are very site specific, i.e. different sites need different profile
models and some might be open to the public or not.
However, the reasons I just mentioned above, do not conflict with
putting the app in the geonode folder instead of the capra one.
If it's ok with you I will take care of this refactoring after my
metadata branch gets merged back to master.
Ariel.