Geoff Davis wrote:
+1 on Jim's suggestion #2.
However, if I am understanding things correctly, it doesn't really sound like door #2 entails a huge deviation from from our current course of bringing Zope 2 and Zope 3 together gradually. I don't really care what the converged product is called, be it Zope 2.250 or Zope 3.99 or Zope 5.
My take is that Jim is not really proposing anything all that different from what Martijn wants -- a gradual convergence of Zope 2 and 3. Rather, it sounds like the biggest changes in Jim's proposal #2 entail:
1) a change in how we _talk_ about what we are doing, and 2) an explicit attempt to factor out some of the Zope 3 goodness into a more generic, less-monolithic-app-server framework, Zed (or Z or ZomethingElse).
Am I right here, Jim?
Yup. Realizing that there are two distinc efforts (the app server and the collection of technologies) and making that distinction clear.
I think that the idea of giving Zed its own, distinct identity is great. Zope 3 is a _huge_ overhaul and it needs to be obvious to the world that it is dramatically better than crufty old Zope 2. Zope 3 then becomes the Zed application server; Zope 2 is getting Zed retrofits via Five, and the two will eventually converge into Zope 5 (or Zope 2.27 or whatever).
Ooops. OK I guess I was clear as mud. :) My idea for "Z", pronounced "zed" or whatever the naming gods decide is that it was *not* an app server. It is an un-app-server. :) A collection of technologies that are useful by themselves, to support an app server and useful to build non-app-server applications, web or otherwise. I think that Z3 is better than Z2 in a lot of ways. I also think that Z2 is more mature and complete. I really want us to combine those efforts. I think we've achieved enough and learned enough with Zope 3 that we can now bring that to bear and make Zope 2 better, refactoring the cruft away and applying the lessons we've learned with Zope 3. (Note that Zope 3 is not crust free.) I don't really care what this thing ends up being called, except that it *must* be called Zope.
A distinct Zed distribution could bring in developers who are just interested in using the component architecture but not necessarily a big app server stack. It would be cool to see Zed popping up in random python products or perhaps even in TurboGears / Django internals. And more than just cool -- the more people we can get using Zed, the more code we will be able to mix in easily to Zope (2/3/5) applications.
This paragraph makes me think I was clear. Yes, we need to follow Ian Bicking's advice and release our technology in bite-sized chunks. I'm hopeful that the packaging efforts underway will lead to more of that. Jim -- Jim Fulton mailto:jim@zope.com Python Powered! CTO (540) 361-1714 http://www.python.org Zope Corporation http://www.zope.com http://www.zope.org