Since I seem to be the cause of all hell breaking loose over here, I thought take the opportunity to respond, since I haven't really been given an opportunity to do that. Since this probably going to be my only ever posting to zope-dev, I don't feel constrained to be brief in exercising my right of reply. I'm not going to apologise for the comments I made, or the manner in which I made them. Those comments were made on a list run by me, basically for my own amusement. If I had posted either of those emails to someone else's list, I'd quite rightly deserve to be fried. I don't make money from Zope Development (I don't make money), I don't run a website, in fact, I don't actually use any of the products I have released. So it's not like I have a vested interest in Zope. My fortunes don't rest on the success or failure of Zope or any one of its components. I live in a country the size of the USA that has the approximate population of New York State. Even if I stood on a busy street corner with a loud hailer, the number of people I could actually influence would be small. This makes me one of the people in the trenches. It is the people who are in the trenches who are increasingly being disaffected by Zope Corp, it seems as if you're not subscribed to zope-dev, you have no voice, and for most people zope-dev is not an appropriate forum for them to be subscribed to. As some of you know, I was hounded off of the zope@ mailing list for suggesting that there be some other mailing list for more technical discussion. People were very upset, because, they already have a hard time getting any support. Noone from Zope Corp seems to monitor the list to help out. The zope list was manned by people like me volunteering expertise and time to help more of the little people. A lot of those people come to the irc channel, which is also rarely if ever visited by anyone from Zope Corp. Most people know that #zope is the place to go when all else fails. The major irony of this is, that most of the people seeking help on #zope are working with it, or consulting with it, and are supported by me and others for free. We are the ones that deal with the 'general zope public.' We are the defenders of the faith. The Zope Weekly News, which turned into Zope Monthly News, which now has not been updated since October is a joke. It shows Zope Corporation's attitude towards their community. It says "We don't care about our community." I'm sure that's not the feeling of the *individuals* inside Zope Corp, I'm sure it is (or I hope it is) a source of great embarassment to those individuals that work for Zope Corp. Letting your community showpiece atrophy doesn't show any great passion towards us, it certainly doesn't endear new users to Zope. New users are the only way Zope Corp is going to make more money, unless of course zope.org is just for us non-revenue generating little fish, an inconvenience associated with having Open Source software, not something that promotes and supports the non-paying community. Noone wants a standardised User Management API more than me. I *want* to have confidence that someone can replace any User Folder with XUF, and it will just work. So when I come across something that says there is a New User Management API, I get excited. I prepare to roll up my sleeves and make the necessary changes to make software I contributed to the community continue to work. I think we all know by now my opinion on what I found, the harshness of the expression of that opinion is directly related to the way that these days Zope Corp seems to be an Ivory Tower and the way they seem to treat the community at large. There are approximately 450 products released by just over 200 people on Zope.org. There are approximately 1000 'entities' subscribed to this list (more to the main list), I represent 0.1% of this community, but, am responsible (but, not soley) for 3% of the total product space available. If people want to form an opinion of me based on one email, that's your right. You don't have the right to tell me, that *I* don't have the right to say the things I'm saying. I have earned the right to make these comments, I have contributed time, effort, and code, and I put my money where my mouth is. I'm not some backseat political observer, I am in the trenches I deal with the disaffected, the confused, and the generally pissed off every day. In my efforts, I try to help to make Zope a better product. You would be hard pressed to find a more stalwart supporter of Zope than me. This doesn't mean that I have to think that everything that leaves the holy temple of Zope Corp is the panacea of web development. My opinions might be wrong, but, they're not wrong simply because something was released by Zope Corp, or written by some person you have attached some god like status to. I will continue to do my thing, but, the way Zope Corp deals with us, the little fish had better change, or there's not going to be much of a community left. Those of you who subscribe to zope-dev who think that your time is too valuable to be spent helping others, well, words fail me. -- Totally Holistic Enterprises Internet| | Andrew Milton The Internet (Aust) Pty Ltd | | ACN: 082 081 472 ABN: 83 082 081 472 | M:+61 416 022 411 | Carpe Daemon PO Box 837 Indooroopilly QLD 4068 |akm@theinternet.com.au|
My Two Cents I don't regularly post to zope-dev, simply because there are many other people in the zope community who can answer the questions just as well i as could. But i remain subscribed, reading an post that catch my attention. I have read Mr. Milton's posts carefully, and although i sense a fair bit of emotion in his words what he has to say i think is quite important. I know Andy from #zope, I am one of the people who seek to give advise on #zope. I am also the co-partner in the New Information Paradigms (NIP) Zope department, along with Chris Withers, So I do have a vested interest in Zope and I do care about Zopes image, direction and cause but I wouldn't go broke if Zope turned bad. Andy is right when he says he has a small voice, but as anyone who knows him will already know, When he does say something people have no choice but to listen, perhaps its because of his gung-ho attitude. (which isn't necessarily a bad thing) He has a point about code, it being messy, unthought through or just simply inadequate. I am not blaming any body, but sometimes it is very hard to provide the opposite on a product that has been growing continually for over three years. In fact I would go as far to say that considering the product have been growing for over three years, of which I have been interested for over two, i think the code has been well maintained. I personally think one of Zope major contributors to untidiness is in its backwards compatibility. Which brings me to a question to ZC: How far does Zopes backwards compatibility stretch? When will the <!--#var varName--> syntax no longer be wasting space inside the core code?, When will i get an error when I try to do a PARENTS[0]?. Its very hard to tell someone that PARENTS has been depreciated when it still works. What i am trying to say is perhaps there is some backwards compatibility that we don't need, and by reducing the backwards compatibility perhaps we (notice i use we, i mean the community not just ZC) can tidy up some code, and make the tar.gz smaller by getting rid of some of that cruft. To be honest i would be happy for Zope 3 not to be backwards compatible. Tidy it up, delete the unless code, dare i say it - refactor. Yes so my products will break, well half a days refactoring myself and i have a tidier more understandable project anyway. I'll get back to what i originally wanted to say. and that is: Don't judge Andy Milton too harshly for speaking up. And don't judge him in the way that he did it. Instead put your on judgments aside and read what he actually has to say. Personally, I agree with some of it and i disagree with other parts of it. But everyone is entitled to their own opinion. Thanks for listening to my rant, I hope it helped the cause. -Andy Dawkins (AndyD) (oh know, another bloody Andy) Andrew Kenneth Milton wrote:
Since I seem to be the cause of all hell breaking loose over here, I thought take the opportunity to respond, since I haven't really been given an opportunity to do that. Since this probably going to be my only ever posting to zope-dev, I don't feel constrained to be brief in exercising my right of reply.
I'm not going to apologise for the comments I made, or the manner in which I made them. Those comments were made on a list run by me, basically for my own amusement. If I had posted either of those emails to someone else's list, I'd quite rightly deserve to be fried.
I don't make money from Zope Development (I don't make money), I don't run a website, in fact, I don't actually use any of the products I have released. So it's not like I have a vested interest in Zope. My fortunes don't rest on the success or failure of Zope or any one of its components. I live in a country the size of the USA that has the approximate population of New York State. Even if I stood on a busy street corner with a loud hailer, the number of people I could actually influence would be small. This makes me one of the people in the trenches.
It is the people who are in the trenches who are increasingly being disaffected by Zope Corp, it seems as if you're not subscribed to zope-dev, you have no voice, and for most people zope-dev is not an appropriate forum for them to be subscribed to. As some of you know, I was hounded off of the zope@ mailing list for suggesting that there be some other mailing list for more technical discussion. People were very upset, because, they already have a hard time getting any support. Noone from Zope Corp seems to monitor the list to help out. The zope list was manned by people like me volunteering expertise and time to help more of the little people.
A lot of those people come to the irc channel, which is also rarely if ever visited by anyone from Zope Corp. Most people know that #zope is the place to go when all else fails. The major irony of this is, that most of the people seeking help on #zope are working with it, or consulting with it, and are supported by me and others for free. We are the ones that deal with the 'general zope public.' We are the defenders of the faith.
The Zope Weekly News, which turned into Zope Monthly News, which now has not been updated since October is a joke. It shows Zope Corporation's attitude towards their community. It says "We don't care about our community." I'm sure that's not the feeling of the *individuals* inside Zope Corp, I'm sure it is (or I hope it is) a source of great embarassment to those individuals that work for Zope Corp.
Letting your community showpiece atrophy doesn't show any great passion towards us, it certainly doesn't endear new users to Zope. New users are the only way Zope Corp is going to make more money, unless of course zope.org is just for us non-revenue generating little fish, an inconvenience associated with having Open Source software, not something that promotes and supports the non-paying community.
Noone wants a standardised User Management API more than me. I *want* to have confidence that someone can replace any User Folder with XUF, and it will just work. So when I come across something that says there is a New User Management API, I get excited. I prepare to roll up my sleeves and make the necessary changes to make software I contributed to the community continue to work. I think we all know by now my opinion on what I found, the harshness of the expression of that opinion is directly related to the way that these days Zope Corp seems to be an Ivory Tower and the way they seem to treat the community at large.
There are approximately 450 products released by just over 200 people on Zope.org. There are approximately 1000 'entities' subscribed to this list (more to the main list), I represent 0.1% of this community, but, am responsible (but, not soley) for 3% of the total product space available.
If people want to form an opinion of me based on one email, that's your right. You don't have the right to tell me, that *I* don't have the right to say the things I'm saying. I have earned the right to make these comments, I have contributed time, effort, and code, and I put my money where my mouth is. I'm not some backseat political observer, I am in the trenches I deal with the disaffected, the confused, and the generally pissed off every day. In my efforts, I try to help to make Zope a better product.
You would be hard pressed to find a more stalwart supporter of Zope than me. This doesn't mean that I have to think that everything that leaves the holy temple of Zope Corp is the panacea of web development. My opinions might be wrong, but, they're not wrong simply because something was released by Zope Corp, or written by some person you have attached some god like status to.
I will continue to do my thing, but, the way Zope Corp deals with us, the little fish had better change, or there's not going to be much of a community left. Those of you who subscribe to zope-dev who think that your time is too valuable to be spent helping others, well, words fail me.
-- Totally Holistic Enterprises Internet| | Andrew Milton The Internet (Aust) Pty Ltd | | ACN: 082 081 472 ABN: 83 082 081 472 | M:+61 416 022 411 | Carpe Daemon PO Box 837 Indooroopilly QLD 4068 |akm@theinternet.com.au|
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At 10:10 AM 11/30/2001 +0000, Andy Dawkins wrote:
To be honest i would be happy for Zope 3 not to be backwards compatible. Tidy it up, delete the unless code, dare i say it - refactor. Yes so my products will break, well half a days refactoring myself and i have a tidier more understandable project anyway.
It is strange, but I actually agree on that. As I have seen in the CVS checkins (which I at least try to keep track of), Zope3 will be quiet different and the philosophy changes are so severe that some old concepts don't seem to fit anymore, like manage_* methods... I know we started discussing this already on Coders....there it was suggested to have simply a Zope2 Compatibility product (but I do not know, whether this is actually technical feasible, since a HotFix product cannot patch every corner of Zope.) Since I have to port my 13 products, I will have enough experience after that and can write necessary documentation... Regards, Stephan -- Stephan Richter CBU - Physics and Chemistry Student Web2k - Web Design/Development & Technical Project Management
Hi!
To be honest i would be happy for Zope 3 not to be backwards compatible. Tidy it up, delete the unless code, dare i say it - refactor. Yes so my products will break, well half a days refactoring myself and i have a tidier more understandable project anyway.
YES, we need a new start. Building on what we have now, of course, but doing things better without having to think about all the legacy stuff. When I see long-time Zope users like Tom Schwaller (who is a Linux legend in Germany) move on to something new like Webware for Python, that makes me wonder if Zope is starting to loose some of its momentum. Zope is a great product. And it becomes easier to sell it every day. But it could be so much better and more easy to use with just a little effort. Just to mention a few points: What we really need is
A true vision of what Zope 3.0 is going to be <<<
Zope 2.x, together with the CMF, was "sold" bei DC/ZC as a content management product, which it isn't really. It is a good start for building one, but so many things that are mandatory for a CMS are missing in the out-of-the-box installation. Zope is a nearly perfect document storage, except for its server implementations for FTP (and partly also HTTP/Web-DAV) will not be too useful with major system load. Zope + Python are a dream team for web-based applications. I think that a single product can't be good at all these things. But I also think that Zope could emerge into a suite of near-perfect products for web-based internet and extranet solutions. I think Zope should be split up into components as soon as possible: - a database layer that includes alternatives to the ZODB (using products like DBObjects or the new stuff from 7x - a document management frontend to the database layer that can be used to manage all kinds of docs. Together with add-on products like the document library, Zope already does much of this, but it is not optimized for high loads yet, and products like Microsoft's Sharepoint Server are really coming close now. I wonder why people in the open source community seem to ignore what Microsoft is doing. I don't ask you to USE their software, but we should at least try to get inspired by the good ideas they have (or have collected from others who had them first). What we need in that part of Zope is high-performance real-time cataloging and searching, interoperability with FTP, WebDAV, maybe even SAMBA and NFS, automatic document conversion from Word/PDF to HTML etc. - an application development framework. Here, we need some more work done towards a real IDE (for Python and Zope). A lot of work has been done already by people like Riaan (who maintains Boa Constructor). Most of DTML (if not all) should go, and Python as the main programming language for Zope should be in the focus of documentation and training efforts. I spent more than a year with getting good at DMTL, just to find out in the end that ZClasses/DTML are really limiting and that developing in Python is almost as fast and much more effective. We need full integration between ZODB-code and filesystem code for that. We need ways of doing ZClass-like things with real Python code, and we need CVS-compatibility or something better within Zope. XML-RPC/SOAP/Webservices could be a strong part of this. - a real, complete, out-of-the-box CMS, based on the other three components. I know that there are at least a dozen good CMS BASED on Zope, but this seems to me to be a waste of resources. We only need one good system that can be maintained by many people. It needs a high-level plug-in architecture, so that people can contribute modules that can interact with each other. Currently, most Zope products other than the database adapters and user folder implementations are standalone products. Let's take Squishdot as an example. It is cool, yes. But it is not compatible with anything but itself. The CMF was a first try to build a standard Zope CMS, but it still far from being a good solution. It solves problems you don't have and takes away solutions plain Zope can offer, like being able to build hierarchically structured sites (as it has a flat member paradigm). What we need for the CMS level is: - easy-to-use (partly WYSIWYG) editor tools - a chroming/skinning mechanism that is used by all components - workflow - ... - on top of all that, I see really sophisticated systems like (real) portal toolkits or groupware software. - one of the remaining questions is: Does Zope need a stronger XML story? I think that Zope Corporation doesn't want to maintain all of that, and that they actually wouldn't be able to do so. So it is really important to make sure what will be part of Zope 3 and what not. And who is going to be in charge of what. Wow, this has gotten rather lengthy (and still incomplete). But maybe I'll get some feedback on this ... Joachim
If anyone has seen how open source works, there is usually a strong core team - like the ZC folks- who provide direction to the project. There are also dozens if not hundreds of enthusiastic folks who are less involved but contribute features, patches, bug fixes, documentation ... Despite the fact that Zope is one of the most attractive open source project around today there is no mass appeal to the project. The ZC folks are now struggling with issues that should be handled by folks less knowledgeable. In my humble opinion if the open source process had been allowed to progress unfettered by corporate greed Zope would even now have a state of maturity that it is not likely to reach even in 10 years of development at the current rate. --- Joachim Werner <joe@iuveno-net.de> wrote:
Hi!
To be honest i would be happy for Zope 3 not to be backwards compatible. Tidy it up, delete the unless code, dare i say it - refactor. Yes so my products will break, well half a days refactoring myself and i have a tidier more understandable project anyway.
YES, we need a new start. Building on what we have now, of course, but doing things better without having to think about all the legacy stuff. When I see long-time Zope users like Tom Schwaller (who is a Linux legend in Germany) move on to something new like Webware for Python, that makes me wonder if Zope is starting to loose some of its momentum.
Zope is a great product. And it becomes easier to sell it every day. But it could be so much better and more easy to use with just a little effort. Just to mention a few points: What we really need is
A true vision of what Zope 3.0 is going to be <<<
Zope 2.x, together with the CMF, was "sold" bei DC/ZC as a content management product, which it isn't really. It is a good start for building one, but so many things that are mandatory for a CMS are missing in the out-of-the-box installation.
Zope is a nearly perfect document storage, except for its server implementations for FTP (and partly also HTTP/Web-DAV) will not be too useful with major system load.
Zope + Python are a dream team for web-based applications.
I think that a single product can't be good at all these things. But I also think that Zope could emerge into a suite of near-perfect products for web-based internet and extranet solutions.
I think Zope should be split up into components as soon as possible:
- a database layer that includes alternatives to the ZODB (using products like DBObjects or the new stuff from 7x
- a document management frontend to the database layer that can be used to manage all kinds of docs. Together with add-on products like the document library, Zope already does much of this, but it is not optimized for high loads yet, and products like Microsoft's Sharepoint Server are really coming close now. I wonder why people in the open source community seem to ignore what Microsoft is doing. I don't ask you to USE their software, but we should at least try to get inspired by the good ideas they have (or have collected from others who had them first). What we need in that part of Zope is high-performance real-time cataloging and searching, interoperability with FTP, WebDAV, maybe even SAMBA and NFS, automatic document conversion from Word/PDF to HTML etc.
- an application development framework. Here, we need some more work done towards a real IDE (for Python and Zope). A lot of work has been done already by people like Riaan (who maintains Boa Constructor). Most of DTML (if not all) should go, and Python as the main programming language for Zope should be in the focus of documentation and training efforts. I spent more than a year with getting good at DMTL, just to find out in the end that ZClasses/DTML are really limiting and that developing in Python is almost as fast and much more effective. We need full integration between ZODB-code and filesystem code for that. We need ways of doing ZClass-like things with real Python code, and we need CVS-compatibility or something better within Zope. XML-RPC/SOAP/Webservices could be a strong part of this.
- a real, complete, out-of-the-box CMS, based on the other three components. I know that there are at least a dozen good CMS BASED on Zope, but this seems to me to be a waste of resources. We only need one good system that can be maintained by many people. It needs a high-level plug-in architecture, so that people can contribute modules that can interact with each other. Currently, most Zope products other than the database adapters and user folder implementations are standalone products. Let's take Squishdot as an example. It is cool, yes. But it is not compatible with anything but itself. The CMF was a first try to build a standard Zope CMS, but it still far from being a good solution. It solves problems you don't have and takes away solutions plain Zope can offer, like being able to build hierarchically structured sites (as it has a flat member paradigm). What we need for the CMS level is:
- easy-to-use (partly WYSIWYG) editor tools
- a chroming/skinning mechanism that is used by all components
- workflow
- ...
- on top of all that, I see really sophisticated systems like (real) portal toolkits or groupware software.
- one of the remaining questions is: Does Zope need a stronger XML story?
I think that Zope Corporation doesn't want to maintain all of that, and that they actually wouldn't be able to do so. So it is really important to make sure what will be part of Zope 3 and what not. And who is going to be in charge of what.
Wow, this has gotten rather lengthy (and still incomplete). But maybe I'll get some feedback on this ...
Joachim
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http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-announce http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope )
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Clark, where is the problem?? Yes ZC ties to make money out of Zope. And I hope they are successful. Don't you know that only those that have can give? If ZC does not make the money to cover their cost how can they give us Zope?? Open source is not only for fun. Also to make money! Robert ----- Original Message ----- From: "Clark O'Brien" <clark_obrien@yahoo.com> To: "Joachim Werner" <joe@iuveno-net.de>; "Andy Dawkins" <andyd@nipltd.com>; <zope-dev@zope.org> Sent: Saturday, December 01, 2001 6:47 PM Subject: Re: [Zope-dev] Open Letter to zope-dev
If anyone has seen how open source works, there is usually a strong core team - like the ZC folks- who provide direction to the project. There are also dozens if not hundreds of enthusiastic folks who are less involved but contribute features, patches, bug fixes, documentation ...
Despite the fact that Zope is one of the most attractive open source project around today there is no mass appeal to the project. The ZC folks are now struggling with issues that should be handled by folks less knowledgeable.
In my humble opinion if the open source process had been allowed to progress unfettered by corporate greed Zope would even now have a state of maturity that it is not likely to reach even in 10 years of development at the current rate.
--- Joachim Werner <joe@iuveno-net.de> wrote:
Hi!
To be honest i would be happy for Zope 3 not to be backwards compatible. Tidy it up, delete the unless code, dare i say it - refactor. Yes so my products will break, well half a days refactoring myself and i have a tidier more understandable project anyway.
YES, we need a new start. Building on what we have now, of course, but doing things better without having to think about all the legacy stuff. When I see long-time Zope users like Tom Schwaller (who is a Linux legend in Germany) move on to something new like Webware for Python, that makes me wonder if Zope is starting to loose some of its momentum.
Zope is a great product. And it becomes easier to sell it every day. But it could be so much better and more easy to use with just a little effort. Just to mention a few points: What we really need is
A true vision of what Zope 3.0 is going to be <<<
Zope 2.x, together with the CMF, was "sold" bei DC/ZC as a content management product, which it isn't really. It is a good start for building one, but so many things that are mandatory for a CMS are missing in the out-of-the-box installation.
Zope is a nearly perfect document storage, except for its server implementations for FTP (and partly also HTTP/Web-DAV) will not be too useful with major system load.
Zope + Python are a dream team for web-based applications.
I think that a single product can't be good at all these things. But I also think that Zope could emerge into a suite of near-perfect products for web-based internet and extranet solutions.
I think Zope should be split up into components as soon as possible:
- a database layer that includes alternatives to the ZODB (using products like DBObjects or the new stuff from 7x
- a document management frontend to the database layer that can be used to manage all kinds of docs. Together with add-on products like the document library, Zope already does much of this, but it is not optimized for high loads yet, and products like Microsoft's Sharepoint Server are really coming close now. I wonder why people in the open source community seem to ignore what Microsoft is doing. I don't ask you to USE their software, but we should at least try to get inspired by the good ideas they have (or have collected from others who had them first). What we need in that part of Zope is high-performance real-time cataloging and searching, interoperability with FTP, WebDAV, maybe even SAMBA and NFS, automatic document conversion from Word/PDF to HTML etc.
- an application development framework. Here, we need some more work done towards a real IDE (for Python and Zope). A lot of work has been done already by people like Riaan (who maintains Boa Constructor). Most of DTML (if not all) should go, and Python as the main programming language for Zope should be in the focus of documentation and training efforts. I spent more than a year with getting good at DMTL, just to find out in the end that ZClasses/DTML are really limiting and that developing in Python is almost as fast and much more effective. We need full integration between ZODB-code and filesystem code for that. We need ways of doing ZClass-like things with real Python code, and we need CVS-compatibility or something better within Zope. XML-RPC/SOAP/Webservices could be a strong part of this.
- a real, complete, out-of-the-box CMS, based on the other three components. I know that there are at least a dozen good CMS BASED on Zope, but this seems to me to be a waste of resources. We only need one good system that can be maintained by many people. It needs a high-level plug-in architecture, so that people can contribute modules that can interact with each other. Currently, most Zope products other than the database adapters and user folder implementations are standalone products. Let's take Squishdot as an example. It is cool, yes. But it is not compatible with anything but itself. The CMF was a first try to build a standard Zope CMS, but it still far from being a good solution. It solves problems you don't have and takes away solutions plain Zope can offer, like being able to build hierarchically structured sites (as it has a flat member paradigm). What we need for the CMS level is:
- easy-to-use (partly WYSIWYG) editor tools
- a chroming/skinning mechanism that is used by all components
- workflow
- ...
- on top of all that, I see really sophisticated systems like (real) portal toolkits or groupware software.
- one of the remaining questions is: Does Zope need a stronger XML story?
I think that Zope Corporation doesn't want to maintain all of that, and that they actually wouldn't be able to do so. So it is really important to make sure what will be part of Zope 3 and what not. And who is going to be in charge of what.
Wow, this has gotten rather lengthy (and still incomplete). But maybe I'll get some feedback on this ...
Joachim
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http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-announce http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope )
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Clark O'Brien wrote:
In my humble opinion if the open source process had been allowed to progress unfettered by corporate greed Zope would even now have a state of maturity that it is not likely to reach even in 10 years of development at the current rate.
Oh go back to your troll hole would ya? Chris
Joachim Werner wrote:
Zope 2.x, together with the CMF, was "sold" bei DC/ZC as a content management product,
No it wasn't, it was sold as a Content Management Framework, ie one of these:
It is a good start for building one,
Zope is a nearly perfect document storage, except for its server implementations for FTP (and partly also HTTP/Web-DAV) will not be too useful with major system load.
Not lots of big documents, especially if they change often ;-)
- a database layer that includes alternatives to the ZODB (using products like DBObjects or the new stuff from 7x
Well, just a better abstraction of objects -> storage. ZODB is currently too slanted towards storing object irrespective of their structure. It needs to get more intelligent in the same way that DBObjects is...
what Microsoft is doing. I don't ask you to USE their software, but we should at least try to get inspired by the good ideas they have (or have collected from others who had them first).
I agree, we should beat them at their own game :-)
What we need in that part of Zope is high-performance real-time cataloging and searching,
Gimme a chance :-P cheers, Chris
From: "Andrew Kenneth Milton" <akm@theinternet.com.au>
Noone from Zope Corp seems to monitor the list to help out.
That is not my experience at all. I have received answers from Zope corps several times. But sure, most of the answers you get come from the community members. Thats what a community is all about, and thats the hallmark of a good community.
The major irony of this is, that most of the people seeking help on #zope are working with it, or consulting with it, and are supported by me and others for free. We are the ones that deal with the 'general zope public.' We are the defenders of the faith.
I'm not sure I understand why this is ironic. I guess I have missed someting in the "all-hell-breaking-loose" part of things. :-) Zope if free and open source. It is therefore unavoidable that the community has to support itself, becuase Zope corp doesn't make any money from that software. You could say that this is "the price" that you pay for the "free" software. :-) Most of the times you will however receive faster and better support from communities than direct from any companys support. So it's a low price to pay. What I do agree on is that Zope corp not always seem to *listen* to the community. It is hard to contribute to Zope, and it feels to me that you have to fight to make Zope Corp to things the right way, even when you in fact already have done the work for them. I don't know why that is, or if it is possible to change that. I suspect they simply have far too much to do... :-) The best community I have seen is for the Clavia Nord Modular synthesizer. Clavia contributes abolsutely NOTHING to that community. They do, however, listen to it, and implement several of the features that are most requested in that community. And that is not an open source project, so the community can't contribute anything else than ideas.
Lennart Regebro wrote:
What I do agree on is that Zope corp not always seem to *listen* to the community. It is hard to contribute to Zope, and it feels to me that you have to fight to make Zope Corp to things the right way, even when you in fact already have done the work for them. I don't know why that is, or if it is possible to change that. I suspect they simply have far too much to do... :-)
Does the fishbowl process address this for you? http://dev.zope.org/Fishbowl/Introduction.html -- Steve Alexander Software Engineer Cat-Box limited
Steve Alexander wrote:
Does the fishbowl process address this for you?
From me, that'll be a resounding no.
Every single idea I've had for Zope has died somewhere in the fishbowl, and not because people have turned round and gone "no, that's a crap idea." That I wouldn't have a problem with. The fishbowl is an exciting idea, but quite frankly, I have neither the time nor the patience to monotonously go and check if anyone has commented on a proposal or find out how relevant propsals are doing. We're suppsoed to be good at doing this information management thing, given the jobs we all do, so how come the thing which should be bringing us together is such an example of making the user do all the work while the technology sits idley by? cheers, Chris
At 03:01 PM 11/30/2001 +0000, Chris Withers wrote:
Steve Alexander wrote:
Does the fishbowl process address this for you?
From me, that'll be a resounding no.
Every single idea I've had for Zope has died somewhere in the fishbowl, and not because people have turned round and gone "no, that's a crap idea." That I wouldn't have a problem with.
I second that. The fishbowl is a big ocean and from time to time a bucket of water is added and it gets lost. I remember just my DateTime request!
The fishbowl is an exciting idea, but quite frankly, I have neither the time nor the patience to monotonously go and check if anyone has commented on a proposal or find out how relevant propsals are doing.
I agree. And there was at least no overview of this is new or this has changed... You had to wade through it yourself....
We're suppsoed to be good at doing this information management thing, given the jobs we all do, so how come the thing which should be bringing us together is such an example of making the user do all the work while the technology sits idley by?
Well, I think that needs to be part of ZC's revamp of their structure... Top priority for the community-involved employees (Paul ;-) should be to provide the community with a dev tool they can work with well! BugZilla is not without a reason so famous (even though it is a monster). Regards, Stephan -- Stephan Richter CBU - Physics and Chemistry Student Web2k - Web Design/Development & Technical Project Management
Does the fishbowl process address this for you?
From me, that'll be a resounding no.
Every single idea I've had for Zope has died somewhere in the fishbowl, and not because people have turned round and gone "no, that's a crap idea." That I wouldn't have a problem with.
The fishbowl is an exciting idea, but quite frankly, I have neither the time nor the patience to monotonously go and check if anyone has commented on a proposal or find out how relevant propsals are doing.
The fishbowl is missing some core functionality. They just don't work efficiently. That's why people still prefer mailing lists (though they suck, too, but to a lesser degree I think). We'd need automatic feedback (via mail) if something changes (i.e. I'd like to be able to subscribe to fishbowl wikis). We'd need something like version control, and much better sorting, indexing, and structuring of all the information. It can't be too hard to get that done, but certainly we are not there yet. Joachim
* Lennart Regebro <lennart@regebro.nu> [011130 11:24]:
From: "Andrew Kenneth Milton" <akm@theinternet.com.au>
Noone from Zope Corp seems to monitor the list to help out.
That is not my experience at all. I have received answers from Zope corps several times. But sure, most of the answers you get come from the community members. Thats what a community is all about, and thats the hallmark of a good community.
I agree.
The best community I have seen is for the Clavia Nord Modular synthesizer. Clavia contributes abolsutely NOTHING to that community. They do, however, listen to it, and implement several of the features that are most requested in that community. And that is not an open source project, so the community can't contribute anything else than ideas.
Personally, I think ZC are trying very hard, but are not getting it right. I'm also very sure they are taking this conversation seriously. Brian responded very quickly to the userfolder 'api' issues. They commit a *lot* in terms of software and support (IMO) but little in terms of fostering a community. But then, why should *they* be responsible for this? If we think we're a community, then we should all be responsible for building on it. I think we should have a conversation about what makes a community work, and then come up with some positive suggestions about improving the community *ourselves*. ZC will follow, for sure. There must be members of various OSS communities knocking around here. Python, XML things, Apache Foundation, GNOME. What are peoples' experiences? Which are the best? Why? I'm not sure about the ideal community, but here's some practical ideas to start off with. 1) Just because no-one can ever agree about splitting up the mailing lists, what's to stop somebody setting one up unilaterally? Perhaps the people who care strongly about this should just set up an egroup? I'm sure ZC would link to it from zope.org. Come on somebody, set up a forum at zope-newbies@yahoogroups.com, today, right now, and continue the discussion there. 2) How about the responsiveness of ZC? Granted, it could be much better, but they're *trying*. Let's help them with suggestions. Look at the fishbowl. It's an open process, but doesn't get contributed to that much. What are the problems with it? How can we improve it? I think it should be linked from zope.org more prominently, for a start. I think the wiki format puts people off because they're not familiar with it. How about a familiar-looking discussion board on each proposal, too? 3) Another thing mentioned regularly: the zope.org community site is pretty bad. I think, just as the respository is beginning to open up, so should construction of zope.org. There should be a mailing list, some members of the community should be appointed to some kind of committee, and ZC should always have some representation on it. But it should be led by the people for whom it exists in the first place, IMO. Collectively, we have a vast array of talented designers, programmers, information architects, etc, at our disposal. Will ZC countenance this proposal? If not, should we be working on our own community site? These may be crap ideas, I don't know; but I think we *can* do something about these issues, collectively. We shouldn't just ask ZC to do something about it. Carpe diem and all that. seb
seb bacon wrote:
If we think we're a community, then we should all be responsible for building on it. I think we should have a conversation about what makes a community work, and then come up with some positive suggestions about improving the community *ourselves*. ZC will follow, for sure.
Yep. If not, I say we string 'em up. :^)
There must be members of various OSS communities knocking around here. Python, XML things, Apache Foundation, GNOME. What are peoples' experiences? Which are the best? Why?
I think KDE is a great example of a community that has mastered the paradox of being 100% non-hierarchical (from a corporate involvement perspective), while retaining the clean design you (sometimes) get from top-down organizations.
I'm not sure about the ideal community, but here's some practical ideas to start off with.
1) Just because no-one can ever agree about splitting up the mailing lists, what's to stop somebody setting one up unilaterally? Perhaps the people who care strongly about this should just set up an egroup? I'm sure ZC would link to it from zope.org. Come on somebody, set up a forum at zope-newbies@yahoogroups.com, today, right now, and continue the discussion there.
There's been an effort to come up with a newsgroup gateway that organizes the mailing lists. We've provided some input on it, but it's almost completely a "from the community" kind of thing. I'll let those people reveal themselves, rather than outting them.
2) How about the responsiveness of ZC? Granted, it could be much better, but they're *trying*. Let's help them with suggestions. Look
One suggestion: we can't be 100% up-to-date on the whole Zope world. Help us focus on the places where we can help people that help people. For instance, I'm trying to be a much better citizen of EuroZope. It's a place where I can respond to a few people that are then going to influence a bunch more people. In this respect, I need to be in the institution-building mode, rather than signing up for specific things (like, produce the ZWN).
at the fishbowl. It's an open process, but doesn't get contributed to that much. What are the problems with it? How can we improve it? I think it should be linked from zope.org more prominently, for a start. I think the wiki format puts people off because they're not familiar with it. How about a familiar-looking discussion board on each proposal, too?
This is a good line of discussion.
3) Another thing mentioned regularly: the zope.org community site is pretty bad. I think, just as the respository is beginning to open up, so should construction of zope.org. There should be a mailing list, some members of the community should be appointed to some kind of committee, and ZC should always have some representation on it. But it should be led by the people for whom it exists in the first place, IMO. Collectively, we have a vast array of talented designers, programmers, information architects, etc, at our disposal. Will ZC countenance this proposal? If not, should we be working on our own community site?
I hereby decree that ZC will countenance this proposal. There's only one caveat. I don't want to replace one group of people with a busy agenda with another group of people with a busy agenda. We need a small group of people that are willing to make a long-term commitment to responsibility. These people can then tap into others that can commit on an as-needed basis. Let's start on this today. Here's a chance, a _golden_ chance, to show that the community can grow beyond ZC and take over something challenging. Go subscribe to zope-web and let's get the discussion started on how to bring the community into zope.org.
These may be crap ideas, I don't know; but I think we *can* do something about these issues, collectively. We shouldn't just ask ZC to do something about it. Carpe diem and all that.
Right. If it's all complaints and nobody is willing to be _personally accountable_ to do a better job than ZC, then it will be a long time before we see 10x growth. On the other hand, if the community is actually the big fish and ZC is the little fish, and if the next month shows success on a couple of efforts, then Andrew's note will be looked back on as the catalyst that led to 10x. --Paul
Hi Paul!
I don't want to replace one group of people with a busy agenda with another group of people with a busy agenda. We need a small group of people that are willing to make a long-term commitment to responsibility. These people can then tap into others that can commit on an as-needed basis.
That's the crucial part. Either we find some people who can really take responsibility (i.e. are NOT busy enough yet) or we will probably have to BUY time. I don't see an alternative. The money for that should probably not come from the people who want to make money with Zope for a living, but rather from our clients. I have no idea yet how we could accomplish that, but I feel that it is possible. Joachim BTW: I could have posted the same to the EuroZope list, as we have exactly the same problem there ...
Seb, You raise some good points, the main one being "why aren't we doing it for ourselves". The answer lies in one of the machanics of OSS: forking and splitting is bad. Why? because it divides effort and means a project, for example Zope, overall doesn't get as far as it would have done otherwise. That is why changes that aren't endorsed by ZC, particularly with their new legals grasp on logos and marks, aren't going to get anywhere. This whole area is a fiendishly difficult problem. Mozilla hasn't got it right, some would argue that even Linux hasn't. The answers aren't going to be easy to find, but we as a community do need to find them, however, only ZC can make them work. And they have their own issues, what with needing to make money out of Zope, which means intrinsically that all of us outside of Zope Corp are in competition with them. It's complicated... Chris
And they have their own issues, what with needing to make money out of Zope, which means intrinsically that all of us outside of Zope Corp are in competition with them.
No that is not true. In Germany for example, noone feels in competition with Zope Corp., since they are not even looking for projects there. Regards, Stephan -- Stephan Richter CBU - Physics and Chemistry Student Web2k - Web Design/Development & Technical Project Management
Stephan Richter wrote:
And they have their own issues, what with needing to make money out of Zope, which means intrinsically that all of us outside of Zope Corp are in competition with them.
No that is not true. In Germany for example, noone feels in competition with Zope Corp., since they are not even looking for projects there.
Yet ;-) Chris
On Fri, 30 Nov 2001, Chris Withers wrote:
Stephan Richter wrote:
And they have their own issues, what with needing to make money out of Zope, which means intrinsically that all of us outside of Zope Corp are in competition with them.
No that is not true. In Germany for example, noone feels in competition with Zope Corp., since they are not even looking for projects there.
Yet ;-)
I don't know why people assume that competition=difficult to work together. One of our closest competitors in the ISP business is also one of our closest collaborators. True, our primary markets have different centers, but they do overlap considerably, especially when it comes to the higher end customers. I see the "competition" between ZC and other Zope solution providers, not to mention *between* the other solution providers, as a good thing. It keeps us all on our toes. --RDM
I think its only competition in the same sense as I am competing with all of you for oxygen. Let's call it coopetition. /---------------------------------------------------\ Casey Duncan, Sr. Web Developer National Legal Aid and Defender Association c.duncan@nlada.org \---------------------------------------------------/
I don't think ZC feels this way. Note the comment by Hadar Pedhazur, Chairman of Zope Corporation: comment at:http://www.zope.com/News/PressReleases/DC2ZC "This name change is intended to ensure that Zope and the company that develops Zope are more closely associated with one another in the marketplace." --- Casey Duncan <c.duncan@nlada.org> wrote:
I think its only competition in the same sense as I am competing with all of you for oxygen.
Let's call it coopetition.
/---------------------------------------------------\
Casey Duncan, Sr. Web Developer National Legal Aid and Defender Association c.duncan@nlada.org
\---------------------------------------------------/
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On Friday 07 December 2001 12:57, Clark O'Brien wrote:
I don't think ZC feels this way.
Note the comment by Hadar Pedhazur, Chairman of Zope Corporation: comment at:http://www.zope.com/News/PressReleases/DC2ZC
"This name change is intended to ensure that Zope and the company that develops Zope are more closely associated with one another in the marketplace."
Clarifying a brand. Starting as "Digital Creations" gives you the flexibility to explore more fields than Zope. Once you start putting all your (and other people's) money on that one horse, you make sure everyone knows who's the jockey. That's how it's done. hth, Danny
I seem to have to comment on most of the mails in this thread. Sorry for that ;-)
Personally, I think ZC are trying very hard, but are not getting it right. I'm also very sure they are taking this conversation seriously. Brian responded very quickly to the userfolder 'api' issues. They commit a *lot* in terms of software and support (IMO) but little in terms of fostering a community. But then, why should *they* be responsible for this?
My experience from EuroZope is that we would desperately need some paid "community workers". The Zope community seems to be much more professional than others, which means that there are not enough people with too much free time to run the infrastructure. Most of us contribute a lot, but can't afford doing even more without neglecting the day-to-day business.
1) Just because no-one can ever agree about splitting up the mailing lists, what's to stop somebody setting one up unilaterally? Perhaps the people who care strongly about this should just set up an egroup? I'm sure ZC would link to it from zope.org. Come on somebody, set up a forum at zope-newbies@yahoogroups.com, today, right now, and continue the discussion there.
I personally don't think we need more mailing lists. However, we might need better FAQs/howtos to get the "noise" from the lists.
I think the wiki format puts people off because they're not familiar with it. How about a familiar-looking discussion board on each proposal, too?
Yes, that's a good point.
3) Another thing mentioned regularly: the zope.org community site is pretty bad. I think, just as the respository is beginning to open up, so should construction of zope.org. There should be a mailing list, some members of the community should be appointed to some kind of committee, and ZC should always have some representation on it. But it should be led by the people for whom it exists in the first place, IMO. Collectively, we have a vast array of talented designers, programmers, information architects, etc, at our disposal. Will ZC countenance this proposal? If not, should we be working on our own community site?
We have discussed about that at most of the EuroZope meetings. But still nobody has had enough resources to start. We'd need a Zope-based site that has all the functionality of sourceforge and even more. Zope CAN do that, but zope.org is not a good example indeed. I'd like to be ably to comment on a product right in place, post bug fixes, how-tos and extensions right on the product's site, get reliable information whether a product works with a certain version of Zope etc. Joachim
Joachim Werner wrote:
My experience from EuroZope is that we would desperately need some paid "community workers". The Zope community seems to be much more professional than others, which means that there are not enough people with too much free time to run the infrastructure. Most of us contribute a lot, but can't afford doing even more without neglecting the day-to-day business.
Indeed. If I could get even partial fundign for just some of the projects I'd like to work on (S(qu|w)ishdot, Indexer, Package Manager, CMF, ZODB) then I'd be able to work on them _much_ more than I do now...
We have discussed about that at most of the EuroZope meetings. But still nobody has had enough resources to start. We'd need a Zope-based site that has all the functionality of sourceforge and even more.
What's wrong with SourceForge? cheers, Chris
I am confused? is this a zope-dev or zope-web topic? Is the goal to provide this for new.zope.org to share with the community via XML-RPC and release as a Zope product? Either way we need a component architecture plus identifying all the existing product snippets or objects that could be used. Recruit those authors to support a combined effort. Then let's decide on a road map with priorities and release capabilities as everyone can contribute. We can only address the "we need funding" concern when we have a project definition to help create a budget (money and time). An "uber-collaborative suite" would be awesome that combines the best of Squish, wikis, sourceforge, talkback, UBB, (ZPT and CSS support) (CMF if supported in Zope3.) http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope-dev/2001-November/014225.html http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope-web/2001-December/000759.html A product with "pick-and-choose" capabilities out of the box is what Zope needs to push Zope higher in the OpenSource world and attract more developers to the community. That is the goal right?? "get more developers excited about and adopt Zope so they can contribute to Zope's core or release their own quality products to the community." are my emails too long? i think i get too chatty. :) -Trevor "10x"
-----Original Message----- From: zope-dev-admin@zope.org [mailto:zope-dev-admin@zope.org]On Behalf Of Chris Withers Sent: Tuesday, December 04, 2001 11:37 AM To: Joachim Werner Cc: seb bacon; zope-dev@zope.org Subject: [Zope-dev] Funding, SourceForge
Joachim Werner wrote:
My experience from EuroZope is that we would desperately need some paid "community workers". The Zope community seems to be much more
professional
than others, which means that there are not enough people with too much free time to run the infrastructure. Most of us contribute a lot, but can't afford doing even more without neglecting the day-to-day business.
Indeed. If I could get even partial fundign for just some of the projects I'd like to work on (S(qu|w)ishdot, Indexer, Package Manager, CMF, ZODB) then I'd be able to work on them _much_ more than I do now...
We have discussed about that at most of the EuroZope meetings. But still nobody has had enough resources to start. We'd need a Zope-based site that has all the functionality of sourceforge and even more.
What's wrong with SourceForge?
cheers,
Chris
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Lennart Regebro wrote:
What I do agree on is that Zope corp not always seem to *listen* to the community. It is hard to contribute to Zope, and it feels to me that you have to fight to make Zope Corp to things the right way, even when you in fact already have done the work for them. I don't know why that is, or if it is possible to change that. I suspect they simply have far too much to do... :-)
I'd have to agree with that assessment, plus the reason given. Ultimately it's unacceptible. When I was young and stupid (I'm no longer young), I had my license suspended for too many speeding tickets. I had to go to a class where a psychologist talked to us about "why" we speed. They had an anecdote about an old man who was driving with his wife down a country rode. He saw someone speeding towards an intersection. Though the old man had the priority, the other car kept speeding and hit the old guy's car, killing his wife. The police officer asked they old guy, "Did you see him coming?" "Yes." "Why didn't you stop?" "I had the priority." "But your wife died!" "Yes, but I had the priority." Moral: there's a difference between correct and right. While we might have good reasons for inattention, it will surely lead to an unsatisfying conclusion. Thus, ZC needs to be smaller part of a larger Zope, IMO, and do this by spending more time helping the community take over parts of Zope and the Zope world. --Paul
Paul Everitt wrote:
Moral: there's a difference between correct and right. While we might have good reasons for inattention, it will surely lead to an unsatisfying conclusion. Thus, ZC needs to be smaller part of a larger Zope, IMO, and do this by spending more time helping the community take over parts of Zope and the Zope world.
Well, this is a purpose, which is good. I'd say sorting out the Fishbowl would be a good action to start with. Now, I see options for this: 1. We can build something better. I can list requirements but that's not relevent here. However, this will take serious effort (it's a hard problem...) and as we know from bitter experience, things that need serious effort either don't happen, take far too long to happen or happen badly ;-) 2. We could by a tool that does this kind of thing. Where would we get such a beast from? how much would it cost/ who would fit the bill? 3. We could use another open source tool. Bugzilla springs to mind. Yes, it's not Zope, or even python, but it does work, certainly better than anything we, as a community, have right now or could build in the time it would take to install and set up. Is this time to swallow pride or find a big checkbook? Chris PS: If Mozilla.org becomes Zope based, think of it as a part exchange ;-)
3. We could use another open source tool. Bugzilla springs to mind. Yes, it's not Zope, or even python, but it does work, certainly better than anything we, as a community, have right now or could build in the time it would take to install and set up.
Well, I'm not too sure about that. Bugzilla is an undocumented, hacked, run-at-one-place-but-dont-try-to-move-it-beast. imho. Just like sourceforge... I gave it a try a while ago, but threw it away. IMHO. /Magnus
Magnus Heino wrote:
Well, I'm not too sure about that. Bugzilla is an undocumented, hacked, run-at-one-place-but-dont-try-to-move-it-beast. imho. Just like sourceforge...
And the fishbowl isn't? ;-)
I gave it a try a while ago, but threw it away.
I could say the same of the fishbowl. Mozilla's use of bugzilla, however, still does what I need of it. The few bugs I care about send me regular status updates, and one day Mozilla will be in a state where I want to use it... Chris
On Friday 30 November 2001 10:45 am, Chris Withers allegedly wrote:
Magnus Heino wrote:
Well, I'm not too sure about that. Bugzilla is an undocumented, hacked, run-at-one-place-but-dont-try-to-move-it-beast. imho. Just like sourceforge...
And the fishbowl isn't? ;-)
I gave it a try a while ago, but threw it away.
I could say the same of the fishbowl. Mozilla's use of bugzilla, however, still does what I need of it. The few bugs I care about send me regular status updates, and one day Mozilla will be in a state where I want to use it...
Chris
I think we are getting in the habit as a community of letting ZC do something for us and then saying "this sucks" (in not so many words). Honestly I feel like I can't bitch, this is free stuff already. But...I think what we should do is come up with some priorites. The Fishbowl is our tool for discussion of Zope directions as it were and for fleshing out of ideas. Obviously something is wrong with it or us or both, because quite frankly I find that is not as sucessful as it could be. However, as we are all students of human nature, we can all attest to our own inherent deficiencies, which try as we might are hard to reform. So, since we *can* change the fishbowl, lets focus on that. However, there is currently no way for me to help realistically, short of rolling my own separately. Since it seems that we all read e-mail, lets keep this thread alive and discuss here how to reform the fishbowl. Using the fishbowl to reform itself, well, let's just say that isn't idea with "success" written all over it. I propose (as I just did on zope-web) that ZC do one more little thing for us. Open the web infrastructure up to a few of us. I would be willing to spend a few nights hashing out a "more active" fishbowl system if that's what's important. Lets take that first step though. /---------------------------------------------------\ Casey Duncan, Sr. Web Developer National Legal Aid and Defender Association c.duncan@nlada.org \---------------------------------------------------/
Casey Duncan wrote:
I propose (as I just did on zope-web) that ZC do one more little thing for us. Open the web infrastructure up to a few of us. I would be willing to spend a few nights hashing out a "more active" fishbowl system if that's what's important. Lets take that first step though.
Sold. Get a group of four or five people that are willing to commit up to ten hours a week for the next month. Gather together on zope-web and talk about what you plan to do. When rough consensus is reached, we'll give you logins on the test server. When consensus is reached there, we'll give you logins on zope.org, because at that point, you'll have convinced yourself and others that you're in it for the long haul. It's easy to start. Subscribe to the zope-web mailing list: http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-web ...and start discussing what needs to be done. --Paul
On Saturday 01 December 2001 02:29, Magnus Heino wrote:
3. We could use another open source tool. Bugzilla springs to mind. Yes, it's not Zope, or even python, but it does work, certainly better than anything we, as a community, have right now or could build in the time it would take to install and set up.
Well, I'm not too sure about that. Bugzilla is an undocumented, hacked, run-at-one-place-but-dont-try-to-move-it-beast. imho. Just like sourceforge...
I gave it a try a while ago, but threw it away.
<plug> http://roundup.sf.net/ ... is in heavy development, but is also being used right now. </plug> Richard
Richard Jones wrote:
<plug>
... is in heavy development, but is also being used right now.
</plug>
Well, it's written in Python, so probably a good candidate. Could it be integrated into Zope? cheers, Chris
On Wednesday 05 December 2001 04:01, Chris Withers wrote:
Richard Jones wrote:
<plug>
... is in heavy development, but is also being used right now.
</plug>
Well, it's written in Python, so probably a good candidate.
Could it be integrated into Zope?
Roundup has complete flexibility in the front and back ends. It comes with a web, command-line and e-mail interface and it shouldn't be too hard to add a Zope front-end. Modifying the existing web interface to be a Zope front-end would probably be quite simple. It comes with anydbm and bsddb back-ends (and a dormant, not-quite-working bsddb3 back-end), and defining more is pretty simple. Richard
From: "Chris Withers" <chrisw@nipltd.com>
1. We can build something better. I can list requirements but that's not relevent here. However, this will take serious effort (it's a hard problem...) and as we know from bitter experience, things that need serious effort either don't happen, take far too long to happen or happen badly ;-)
As a friend of mine usually says: How hard can it be? :-) We need a python Product with a couple of objects: 1. A "Proposal" object that is Folder where you list the Document and Discussion objects that reside in it. Proposal objects have notifications, so people that are involved get emails when things happen. 2. A Document object, that is a WIKI. 3. A discussion object where you can have a threaded notifiable discussion. 4. A proposal catalog object, where the proposals are catalogued, and generates a list of the proposals. Doesn't take that many weeks, but no, I definitely don't have time until February... :-/ At least not until I get more efficient when programming, which needs fast debugging and proper unit tests... :-)
Chris Withers wrote:
Paul Everitt wrote:
Moral: there's a difference between correct and right. While we might have good reasons for inattention, it will surely lead to an unsatisfying conclusion. Thus, ZC needs to be smaller part of a larger Zope, IMO, and do this by spending more time helping the community take over parts of Zope and the Zope world.
Well, this is a purpose, which is good.
I'd say sorting out the Fishbowl would be a good action to start with.
You're going to love the irony on this, but there's a proposal in the fishbowl on this: http://dev.zope.org/Wikis/DevSite/Proposals/FishbowlManageability ...and of course, nobody knows the proposal is there.
Now, I see options for this:
1. We can build something better. I can list requirements but that's not relevent here. However, this will take serious effort (it's a hard problem...) and as we know from bitter experience, things that need serious effort either don't happen, take far too long to happen or happen badly ;-)
Yep. I'm in favor of some very small, very incremental steps.
2. We could by a tool that does this kind of thing. Where would we get such a beast from? how much would it cost/ who would fit the bill?
...and what would be the transition costs?
3. We could use another open source tool. Bugzilla springs to mind. Yes, it's not Zope, or even python, but it does work, certainly better than anything we, as a community, have right now or could build in the time it would take to install and set up.
Hmm, I don't really see Bugzilla and the Fishbowl overlapping. Perhaps with the Collector, though. However, I don't think the real issues involved are related to choice of tool. It's been mentioning that ZC doesn't pay attention, so proposals go in and nothing happens. Bugzilla won't fix that problem. I'll add that the community doesn't always pay good enough attention. Sure, people will say "when will we have versioning" or "when will we have web services". We go off, make a proposal, and email zope-dev. No feedback -- I take that back, each has received one response, whether by wiki comment, mailing list response, or private response. This isn't a good track record. Brian produced 35 pages worth of almost-flawless docs on web services to go with his code. But no comments. And he's doing this on his own time. So let's remember that this is a two-way street. IMO, Bugzilla won't fix these kinds of problems. I think the first step is to refine what we have while finding better ways to work together. --Paul
Paul Everitt wrote:
You're going to love the irony on this, but there's a proposal in the fishbowl on this:
http://dev.zope.org/Wikis/DevSite/Proposals/FishbowlManageability
...and of course, nobody knows the proposal is there.
hehe, read Casey's response, it makes the same comment. I find that ironic ;-)
2. We could by a tool that does this kind of thing. Where would we get such a beast from? how much would it cost/ who would fit the bill?
...and what would be the transition costs?
Good point... but you get these with any of the three options...
Hmm, I don't really see Bugzilla and the Fishbowl overlapping. Perhaps with the Collector, though. However, I don't think the real issues involved are related to choice of tool.
I think this is the problem. There shouldn't be a seperate 'fishbowl' and 'collector'. They're doing the same thing; helping Zope get better. Why split that effort? Sure, there should be some differentiation between bug fixes and new developments, but, take the User API changes; was that fixing a bug (badly broken user folder interface) or a new development ('new' user folder api)? I think the difference is small enough that is deserves to be a field on a form rather than a totally separate process. Think about it, both collector and fishbowl 'issues' need: - discussion - consenus - documentation - development - notification of the appropriate people. What differs between them?
It's been mentioning that ZC doesn't pay attention, so proposals go in and nothing happens. Bugzilla won't fix that problem.
Now here I really gotta shout loud 'cos I've made this point so many times I'm wondering how I can say it so it gets through... (Paul, here, have some earplugs ;-) Notification, which bugzilla offers, MAKES ALL THE DIFFERENCE!!!!!! Email notification is good enough, if I want that to beep my cellphone, I just send it to me genie.co.uk email address... None of us have time to read irrelevent web pages, which, for any given person, 90% of the fishbowl probably will be. Furthermore, why should we need to read anything more than what's changed (the last comment added, the status of the issue changing, etc) bugzilla appears to do all this quite well from an outsiders point of view. Of course, it may be a complete pig, in which case we will need to produce something. However, just to say it again, email notification of as little (but not too little!) information is the key. If you need me to prove this, let me knwo and I'll get out my thesis writing pen ;-)
I'll add that the community doesn't always pay good enough attention.
The lack of appropriate notification mechanisms rather than any deliberate or malicious reasons would be my guess for any lack of attention, both within ZC and the community...
Sure, people will say "when will we have versioning" or "when will we have web services". We go off, make a proposal, and email zope-dev. No feedback -- I take that back, each has received one response, whether by wiki comment, mailing list response, or private response.
Wonder if the authors new the comments had been posted? I wonder if the posters had known the author had replied?
This isn't a good track record. Brian produced 35 pages worth of almost-flawless docs on web services to go with his code. But no comments. And he's doing this on his own time. So let's remember that this is a two-way street.
Indeed. I read Brian's proposal when he first announced it. It wasn't quite finished or relevant to me, so I thought "I'll come back later". of course, next day I'd completely forgotten about it (and when I did remembe about it, I couldn't easily find it with resoting to mailing list archives and the like...) and so never came back. Now, if I could have ticked a box saying "email me when such and such happens" then I, or other people here at NIP who are dealing with Web Services in a big way ,would have got involved as soon as appropriate...
IMO, Bugzilla won't fix these kinds of problems. I think the first step is to refine what we have while finding better ways to work together.
Well, okay, don't use bugzilla. But dump wiki, it's not sutructured enough. You want bite sized bits of information, ruthlessly and sem-automatically categorized, with fine-grained control of the notification your receive. Now, that would spark a community into action :-) cheers, Chris PS: Loosing the dichotomy of collector and fishbowl would be another major step... it's all project management anyway ;-)
"CW" == Chris Withers <chrisw@nipltd.com> writes:
CW> Now here I really gotta shout loud 'cos I've made this point CW> so many times I'm wondering how I can say it so it gets CW> through... (Paul, here, have some earplugs ;-) CW> Notification, which bugzilla offers, MAKES ALL THE CW> DIFFERENCE!!!!!! Email notification is good enough, if I want CW> that to beep my cellphone, I just send it to me genie.co.uk CW> email address... I should mention that Simon Michael's MailWiki tool is incredible for things like this. It mails changes in the Wiki (almost, but not resembling, a unified diff, with the PageChange'd title in the subject). It also allows for mail-in appending, which of course is potentially dangerous, but so is any WWW-based storage of mail. Intelligent use of mail filtering (which has led to my symbiotic relationship with emacs and gnus for nearly 6 years now) will reduce the burden. It's not perfect, but it's not bad. I REALLY, but REALLY like using this feature. And I've been using on a wiki that I use for "brain dumps" from email... It would need a bit more work (semi-validation of "from", etc), but it is potentially useful in this context. I hate firing up a browser to go searching, but I'll do it if something catches my eye... CW> Well, okay, don't use bugzilla. But dump wiki, it's not CW> sutructured enough. You want bite sized bits of information, See above. But maybe it still wouldn't be structured enough. best, -tony -- A.J. Rossini Rsrch. Asst. Prof. of Biostatistics U. of Washington Biostatistics rossini@u.washington.edu FHCRC/SCHARP/HIV Vaccine Trials Net rossini@scharp.org -------------- http://software.biostat.washington.edu/ -------------- FHCRC: M-W: 206-667-7025 (fax=4812)|Voicemail is pretty sketchy/use Email UW: T-Th: 206-543-1044 (fax=3286)|Change last 4 digits of phone to FAX Rosen: (Mullins' Lab) Fridays, and I'm unreachable except by email.
+2 I like the idea of unifying the fishbowl and the collector. And I agree about notification. seb
Paul Everitt wrote:
This isn't a good track record. Brian produced 35 pages worth of almost-flawless docs on web services to go with his code. But no comments. And he's doing this on his own time. So let's remember that this is a two-way street.
<snip> * Chris Withers <chrisw@nipltd.com> [011130 16:47]:
list archives and the like...) and so never came back. Now, if I could have ticked a box saying "email me when such and such happens" then I, or other people here at NIP who are dealing with Web Services in a big way ,would have got involved as soon as appropriate...
I think there's another problem here: possibly the community isn't large enough yet. There's already been a discussion on zope-coders about how little those with commit priviledges are actually committing, and the main reason is simply that no-one has enough time. How many people are there who are really comfortable with Zope to the point where they would be able to contribute meaningfully to a discussion about, for example, Web Services? Of the active community, I would guess fewer than 40. Of these, perhaps half missed the announcement. Of the others, probably another half were in the middle of very hectic projects. Of the 10 remaining, perhaps they weren't interested, or were going to look tomorrow but forgot... What we need, as Paul suggested about zope-web, is a set of community members who are able and willing to contribute 10 hours per week. I think there are very few such people. I would love to, but I simply can't. The best way of getting such people is to cast the community web wider, and draw more people in. The best way of doing this is make zope.org *really good*, I reckon. I for one will be pontificating on zope-web next week. seb
On Fri, Nov 30, 2001 at 05:57:17PM +0000, seb bacon wrote:
What we need, as Paul suggested about zope-web, is a set of community members who are able and willing to contribute 10 hours per week. I think there are very few such people. I would love to, but I simply
I'd think the number of such people is zero, except for people who use Zope in their work and can justify time spent developing on Zope itself as being work-related. It can't be assumed that people have much time to spend on a free software project; instead you have to lower the bar, and make it easier for hit-and-run contributors. If it takes days or worse, weeks and months, to get a contribution accepted, people just won't bother. Re: bug tracking. If Bugzilla is too much of a bear to deal with, there are simpler alternatives available, such as Roundup, Jitterbug, the SF bug tracker, and our unreleased SPLAT!. --amk
I agree that we have to lower the bar. What Seb and I were discussing is a commitment from a small group of people to help accomplish lowering the bar. Once it's lowered, then hopefully the rate and impact of casual contributions will greatly increase. --Paul Andrew Kuchling wrote:
On Fri, Nov 30, 2001 at 05:57:17PM +0000, seb bacon wrote:
What we need, as Paul suggested about zope-web, is a set of community members who are able and willing to contribute 10 hours per week. I think there are very few such people. I would love to, but I simply
I'd think the number of such people is zero, except for people who use Zope in their work and can justify time spent developing on Zope itself as being work-related. It can't be assumed that people have much time to spend on a free software project; instead you have to lower the bar, and make it easier for hit-and-run contributors. If it takes days or worse, weeks and months, to get a contribution accepted, people just won't bother.
Re: bug tracking. If Bugzilla is too much of a bear to deal with, there are simpler alternatives available, such as Roundup, Jitterbug, the SF bug tracker, and our unreleased SPLAT!.
--amk
_______________________________________________ Zope-Dev maillist - Zope-Dev@zope.org http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-dev ** No cross posts or HTML encoding! ** (Related lists - http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-announce http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope )
Since I get paid to do Zope and I feel extremely fortunate to be in that position, I will say that there are different types of community involvement that I divide my time across: 1) Activism (like this) 2) Help (Like on zope@zope.org or zopelabs or whatever) 3) Working on my own open source Zope products 4) Submitting/fixing bugs in the Zope core. Now, I consider positive contributions either to the zope core or zope.org to be in addition to the above. So that I would have 10 hours per week just to spend on that is highly unlikely, but sometimes possible if other things above don't take much time, or I don't prioritize them. I could potentially drop #2 altogether (its sporatic anyway), but it makes me feel good and I remember what it was like before I understood what was going on (as if I do now). That said I think maybe what we need are some "community liasons" that devote the majority of their time for right now building an infrastructure for the community and helping others contribute in some way. I'm not exactly sure what that means, but I might be willing to do that. However, I think my contributions in other ways would need to take a back seat, so I'd need to think about it, or be convinced. 8^) /---------------------------------------------------\ Casey Duncan, Sr. Web Developer National Legal Aid and Defender Association c.duncan@nlada.org \---------------------------------------------------/ On Friday 30 November 2001 01:14 pm, Paul Everitt allegedly wrote:
I agree that we have to lower the bar. What Seb and I were discussing is a commitment from a small group of people to help accomplish lowering the bar. Once it's lowered, then hopefully the rate and impact of casual contributions will greatly increase.
--Paul
Andrew Kuchling wrote:
On Fri, Nov 30, 2001 at 05:57:17PM +0000, seb bacon wrote:
What we need, as Paul suggested about zope-web, is a set of community members who are able and willing to contribute 10 hours per week. I think there are very few such people. I would love to, but I simply
I'd think the number of such people is zero, except for people who use Zope in their work and can justify time spent developing on Zope itself as being work-related. It can't be assumed that people have much time to spend on a free software project; instead you have to lower the bar, and make it easier for hit-and-run contributors. If it takes days or worse, weeks and months, to get a contribution accepted, people just won't bother.
Re: bug tracking. If Bugzilla is too much of a bear to deal with, there are simpler alternatives available, such as Roundup, Jitterbug, the SF bug tracker, and our unreleased SPLAT!.
--amk
From: "Andrew Kuchling" <akuchlin@mems-exchange.org>
I'd think the number of such people is zero, except for people who use Zope in their work and can justify time spent developing on Zope itself as being work-related.
Uhm. Thats me, and I can't promise 10 hrs a week either... :-) 5, maybe...
I am hardly qualified to participate in zope-dev issues, but feel compelled to comment on the "tools thread". I find it amusing with the wealth of IT experience involved that the group doesnt just take existing Zope code and polish off an uber-Product to handle everything. Somebody with project management experience needs to step up to the admin role to make it easier on those that want to just develop and improve the core. ZC typically tries to fill this role. Can the community step-up to manage some processes? Now for the fishfood. Email is the best for Notification, but a GUI can better organize task related threads for proposals and grow-Zope-10x projects. Combine the best features of: *_Wiki -- (great for full proposals, collaborative editing, the WikiForNow management, and WikiMail) *_Squishdot -- (great for the BB feel, sound-off/venting discussions indirectly related to projects, category organization, emailing the original Poster of replies, option to moderate) *_Talkback -- (great for controlling contextual commenting localized to paragraphs, as opposed to Wiki's free-love groping) * and CMF (great for CMF) * _SourceForge -- (dont flinch, many Zope Products are moving to SourceForge) I simplified and forgot some requirements, but I dont think you will have complaints if a great collaborative product is released as a result from addressing the "fishbowl" issue. The above products are simple enough to dissect and merge in short order. Then use this well polished out-of-the-box Zope product to get PR to help Zope's reputation compete with the likes of PHP-Nuke, UBB, and other OS-Products. """ Better products, not just a better Zope, will achieve 10x. """ Out-of-the-box products that dont require much thought to install is the bait to grow the community. Success breeds success. Quality breeds quality. I am motivated by aggressive goals like "10x". This will only happen if leaders in the community buy-in and share that goal. Post the goal on top of dev.zope.org if you are serious. How about a system that segregated development of: ___"Explorations"___ (ideas and theories in search of a proposal) ___"Proposals"___ (approved, and committed to be built with time-lines and delegation for shared development, kicks out stalled proposals back down to explorations or archives) ___"Projects"___ (manages development with targeted release dates, CVS, kicks out a project if it languishes) Everyone should easily locate and access posts and comment where deemed appropriate for each task. And build in some self-cleaning workflow. If a proposal doesnt get comments or sits idle after a specified time, bring it back up again for one last gasp for breath before being relegated to an archive. Ask the community what they think in the form of single-click surveys. Minimum brain-cells invested to get feedback. Not feedback just for development...Feedback to build community and support. RAH-RAH. Ask about priorities, what sucks, what's great? etc.. Great developers seldom make great project coordinators and v.v. Get someone with "usability" expertise to assist with GUI's, not necessarily designers. Have I described some things that exist now? so have a group hug and polish things off so they are used more effectively. Now for me to get back to the sidelines. ...head down...shuffle...shuffle Cheers, Trevor
On 30 Nov 2001 at 12:54, Andrew Kuchling wrote:
On Fri, Nov 30, 2001 at 05:57:17PM +0000, seb bacon wrote:
What we need, as Paul suggested about zope-web, is a set of community members who are able and willing to contribute 10 hours per week. I think there are very few such people. I would love to, but I simply
I'd think the number of such people is zero, except for people who use Zope in their work and can justify time spent developing on Zope itself as being work-related.
Raises hand. I use Zope everyday for development for various customers. When I hit a snag in Zope, I have to convince the customer to pay me to fix the problem. Usually, I get asked "can you work around that? What if we eliminated feature xyz?" or "How long will that take?" This is never pleasant. (still thinking about collector item 47 :-( I suppose I could do Zope stuff off-the-clock on personal time, but that's impossible with two small kids at home, plus doing college studies.. I'm supposed to be building an airplane too, but the darn kit has sat in the basement for a year, nothing done.
Re: bug tracking. If Bugzilla is too much of a bear to deal with, there are simpler alternatives available, such as Roundup, Jitterbug, the SF bug tracker, and our unreleased SPLAT!.
SPLAT, sounds interesting, like to see how that stacks up to roundup.. Brad Clements, bkc@murkworks.com (315)268-1000 http://www.murkworks.com (315)268-9812 Fax netmeeting: ils://ils.murkworks.com AOL-IM: BKClements
seb bacon wrote:
What we need, as Paul suggested about zope-web, is a set of community members who are able and willing to contribute 10 hours per week. I think there are very few such people. I would love to, but I simply can't. The best way of getting such people is to cast the community web wider, and draw more people in. The best way of doing this is make zope.org *really good*, I reckon. I for one will be pontificating on zope-web next week.
You know what an interesting about this whole "community involvement" discussion is that most of ZC monitors the lists on an ad-hoc basis. Thus, there's a general notion of who on the lists is aware of what's going on; should an active list participant ever DIRECTLY send an e-mail to someone in ZC it would probably get responded to in a very prompt fashion. Ergo, there are already in place the necessary parts to raise issues to a higher awareness; in my mind, the only fallacy is the assumption that merely posting to the list will guarantee that the people that need to see it will see it. I would suggest that those community members who think an issue is important, privately pick one or two people inside ZC to directly involve with an issue; that person in ZC may say "I dont have time right now" but will generally be more likely to take a constructive approach if they feel an issue has already passed an important hurdle by an active participant bringing it to their attention. This is NOT an offer on my part to get sent more home mortgage refinancing SPAM. I'm not even volunteering to be a community liason. I am suggesting that there are more ways to solve problems than pure consensus, and that initiative can make all the difference in the world.
I think there's another problem here: possibly the community isn't large enough yet. There's already been a discussion on zope-coders about how little those with commit priviledges are actually committing, and the main reason is simply that no-one has enough time.
This might be a bit sarcastic, but I think the community IS large enough. We just have a lot of people who use Zope one-way, i.e. they take the platform and sell the add-on products without re-contributing stuff. To a certain degree this might be necessary, but I think ZC's own experience with ZEO shows that it doesn't make sense in the long run. United we are strong! Joachim
Notification, which bugzilla offers, MAKES ALL THE DIFFERENCE!!!!!! Email notification is good enough, if I want that to beep my cellphone, I just send it to me genie.co.uk email address...
Yet another comment: That translates to "We finally need MAILMAN integration into Zope!!!!!" I mean, Zope CAN send mails, but not that many (at least not efficiently). Or how does Bugzilla do the mail stuff? Joachim
I mean, Zope CAN send mails, but not that many (at least not efficiently). Or how does Bugzilla do the mail stuff?
One at a time via sendmail. Bugzilla has lots of very, very useful features. And does have to look like crap. We ended up using Bugzilla, it rocks. http://bugs.activestate.com Cheers. -- Andy McKay.
This isn't a good track record. Brian produced 35 pages worth of almost-flawless docs on web services to go with his code. But no comments. And he's doing this on his own time. So let's remember that this is a two-way street.
Well, that checkin was done to the cvs 4 days ago. If you haven't read the one line at dev.zope.org about it being available in the cvs, or if you dont subscribe to the cvs mailinglist, how are you supposed to know that it exists? :-P I downloaded the Webservice package a few days ago, and I agree, the docs are really good. But sending a mail to Brian, who probably gets too many mails every day anyway, saying "Good work!"... well. I dunno. /Magnus
Magnus Heino wrote:
Well, that checkin was done to the cvs 4 days ago. If you haven't read the one line at dev.zope.org about it being available in the cvs, or if you dont subscribe to the cvs mailinglist, how are you supposed to know that it exists? :-P
Actually, he sent an email to zope-dev on 11/26. Version control went to zope-dev on 10/23. Between the two, one email of discussion. This is why I'm leery of thinking this is simply a tool issue. I think we'll need more creativity, hijacking notwithstanding. :^) --Paul
Well, that checkin was done to the cvs 4 days ago. If you haven't read the one line at dev.zope.org about it being available in the cvs, or if you dont subscribe to the cvs mailinglist, how are you supposed to know that it exists? :-P
Actually, he sent an email to zope-dev on 11/26. Version control went to zope-dev on 10/23. Between the two, one email of discussion.
Yes. You are right. I found the message. I subscribe to 11 zope mailinglists, and I really try to read them all, but I must have missed this one.
This is why I'm leery of thinking this is simply a tool issue. I think we'll need more creativity, hijacking notwithstanding. :^)
I don't agree. I read the proposal when Brian wrote it, I even got a snapshot from him a while back. Still, I missed the release. The current tool, the Wiki at http://dev.zope.org/Wikis/DevSite/Projects/WebServicesForZope/FrontPage, does not contain the info that he sent in the mail, and it got some links pointing at non-existing pages. I thought I'd fix that, but it says that "Only the owners may edit this page"... But, everything is not bad, the Webservice package looks really good! :-) /Magnus
It's been mentioning that ZC doesn't pay attention, so proposals go in and nothing happens. Bugzilla won't fix that problem. I'll add that the community doesn't always pay good enough attention. Sure, people will say "when will we have versioning" or "when will we have web services". We go off, make a proposal, and email zope-dev. No feedback -- I take that back, each has received one response, whether by wiki comment, mailing list response, or private response.
This is just a guess, but I suspect that this is a sort of unfortunate cycle developing: people post proposals, get (understandably) dismayed at the response time and end up not spending much time there, either contributing or providing feedback. My gut feeling is that the root of this is an ease-of-use problem. We all want to do well-reasoned, professional development in a publicly visible (and usable) forum. Achieving that means a certain amount of ceremony (proposals, projects or something different that achieves the same goals). The big problem right now is that the mechanics of the ceremony are way too painful, especially WRT tracking changes. When we first opened the fishbowl, it was with the certainty that we wouldn't get it right immediately. That's why we went with the intentially low-tech approach of a pile of Wikis. That first step actually worked pretty well for a while until we hit critical-Wiki-mass and there were suddenly too many proposals / projects to follow easily. So please don't think that we are somehow attached to the current fishbowl implementation as some sort of be-all-end-all. When we first put it in place, we were minimal with the fishbowl, applying Jim's second law of engineering ("You can't solve a problem until you know the answer".) Now I think we a lot more about the answer: - The fishbowl needs to be integrated with email in order to stay on people's radar. - There needs to be a way to "filter the firehose" so that people on all sides can focus on the things they care about. - There needs to be a much lighter-weight way of seeing an overview of what's going on (where proposals are in the process and why). - There is still a legitimate need for "content areas" that capture artifacts related to projects. - We need to find a way to scale the process of pushing proposals through to projects. - There needs to be much more clarity on what should happen when a proposal is approved, rejected, ignored, whatever, by the community. The last one is very important IMHO. I just looked, and there are currently 15 proposals in the "awaiting resources" state, meaning that the general idea seems to have met with approval by the developer community and that now someone needs to actually sign up to _do_ it. Unfortunately, I have not been approached by anyone about any of these proposals, except for occasional flame-o-grams demanding to know why they are not done yet. Part of this, I'm sure, is that the community of committers is still fairly small and still getting their bearings. We need to do a better job of helping developers get actively involved - but we'll never have a happy community if "awaiting resources" means "awaiting ZC resources". Ken has written a fair amount on the current fishbowl problems at: http://dev.zope.org/Wikis/DevSite/Proposals/FishbowlManageability How should we go about getting from that + this thread to some concrete solutions? Brian Lloyd brian@zope.com Software Engineer 540.361.1716 Zope Corporation http://www.zope.com
Brian Lloyd wrote:
<snip fishbowl ain't easy to use> spot on ;-)
- The fishbowl needs to be integrated with email in order to stay on people's radar.
Hallelujah!
- There needs to be a way to "filter the firehose" so that people on all sides can focus on the things they care about.
Praise be!
- There needs to be a much lighter-weight way of seeing an overview of what's going on (where proposals are in the process and why).
I am in heaven...
- There is still a legitimate need for "content areas" that capture artifacts related to projects.
yup, but these could hang off issues or exist somewhere totally seperate. These artefacts are actually significantly less important than the status of the issue, who's looking after it, when it was last touched and the other categorisation details. In this respect, the fishbowl is currently completely arse about face ;-)
- We need to find a way to scale the process of pushing proposals through to projects.
Hierarchical management based on trust metrics?
- There needs to be much more clarity on what should happen when a proposal is approved, rejected, ignored, whatever, by the community.
Not so important right now...
The last one is very important IMHO. I just looked, and there are currently 15 proposals in the "awaiting resources" state, meaning that the general idea seems to have met with approval by the developer community and that now someone needs to actually sign up to _do_ it.
I suspect this is because people don't even know these projects exist, once this has been addressed with the points that had me worshiping, I'm betting this problem will disappear of its own accord...
Unfortunately, I have not been approached by anyone about any of these proposals, except for occasional flame-o-grams demanding to know why they are not done yet.
Those'll happen when someone does eventually bump into these dormant proposals/projects, sees they haven't been touched for 2 months and suddenly gets all irate jumping around: "why the fuck hasn't someone done something on this very important issue?!"
Part of this, I'm sure, is that the community of committers is still fairly small and still getting their bearings.
Not to mention suffering the same resource problems that ZC suffers right now :-(
Ken has written a fair amount on the current fishbowl problems at:
http://dev.zope.org/Wikis/DevSite/Proposals/FishbowlManageability
That's the first time I've heard of that other than other posts in this thread ;-)
How should we go about getting from that + this thread to some concrete solutions?
Sounds like we need to build a decent fish pond, and _please_ can we unify it with the collector. cheers, Chris
This is just a guess, but I suspect that this is a sort of unfortunate cycle developing: people post proposals, get (understandably) dismayed at the response time and end up not spending much time there, either contributing or providing feedback.
Well, lets move this discussion to a wiki and see how it goes... This is a tool issue. /Magnus
Magnus Heino wrote:
This is just a guess, but I suspect that this is a sort of unfortunate cycle developing: people post proposals, get (understandably) dismayed at the response time and end up not spending much time there, either contributing or providing feedback.
Well, lets move this discussion to a wiki and see how it goes...
This is a tool issue.
I'd like to propose this crazy tool called email. :^) Anybody that thinks they'd like to participate in the building of a better fishbowl (particularly if your name is Chris :^), trot on over to zope-web@zope.org. Let's hash it out, perhaps starting with Ken's proposal. Let's then make a proposal back to zope-dev and see what people think. --Paul
Brian Lloyd wrote: [snip]
When we first opened the fishbowl, it was with the certainty that we wouldn't get it right immediately. That's why we went with the intentially low-tech approach of a pile of Wikis. That first step actually worked pretty well for a while until we hit critical-Wiki-mass and there were suddenly too many proposals / projects to follow easily. So please don't think that we are somehow attached to the current fishbowl implementation as some sort of be-all-end-all.
When we first put it in place, we were minimal with the fishbowl, applying Jim's second law of engineering ("You can't solve a problem until you know the answer".) Now I think we a lot more about the answer: [snip]
This bears repeating: the fishbowl was _never_ intended to be thought of as a tool. Rather, it should be thought of as an approach, methodology, or culture. You can rip out the Wiki and replace it with the Collector or Bugzilla, and you'd still have the fishbowl. Months ago we reached critical-Wiki-mass. However, we've now reached the point where some people are volunteering to do something about it. --Paul
When we first opened the fishbowl, it was with the certainty that we wouldn't get it right immediately. That's why we went with the intentially low-tech approach of a pile of Wikis. That first step actually worked pretty well for a while until we hit critical-Wiki-mass and there were suddenly too many proposals / projects to follow easily. So please don't think that we are somehow attached to the current fishbowl implementation as some sort of be-all-end-all.
I think that there ARE problems that can not be solved on a mailing list or in the fishbowl. One of them is doing a good general design (which we MIGHT need for some of the Zope 3.0 issues). I followed all the stuff about the CMF and formerly PTK and knew that it was heading to a direction I didn't want, but at the same time I felt that it would not help if I just contributed to the mailing list. Maybe this was a personal problem of mine, but I don't think so. IMHO, there are two possible approaches to problems like that (major design issues I mean): a) dictatorship, if the dictator is really good in his job (e.g. Jim Fulton has done a great job with regard to the design of the ZODB ) b) meeting in real live (or at least in real time) Some of the core architecture of the KDE KParts component model was developed on the KDE 2 conference AFAIK. I think we might have to do sessions like that at the upcoming Zope/Python conferences ... Joachim
Joachim Werner wrote:
I think that there ARE problems that can not be solved on a mailing list or in the fishbowl. One of them is doing a good general design (which we MIGHT need for some of the Zope 3.0 issues). I followed all the stuff about the CMF and formerly PTK and knew that it was heading to a direction I didn't want, but at the same time I felt that it would not help if I just contributed to the mailing list. Maybe this was a personal problem of mine, but I don't think so.
I don't think so either. I think your paragraph above does a wonderful job of concisely summarizing the challenge. First, there shouldn't be Annointed Tools. We should strive to have good tools, and we should strive to use good tools, but the real goal is communication. If the current approach isn't hacking it, we need something else -- which could mean we learn from successful patterns in other projects. Second, when communication reveals an issue -- what happens? Let's say that every single person in the world of Zope agreed that the CMF was going in a wrong direction (just for the sake of argument, as the CMF has people that like it as well as dislike it). Would anything actually happen if consensus was reached, and who would be the ones to convert conclusion into code? Third, as Brian pointed out and you conclude with in the paragraph, frustrated people tune out. This causes the other side of the communication to get frustrated and stop communicating. Then things break down. It's important to recognize this is happening, put aside the frustration, and address the problems.
IMHO, there are two possible approaches to problems like that (major design issues I mean):
a) dictatorship, if the dictator is really good in his job (e.g. Jim Fulton has done a great job with regard to the design of the ZODB )
b) meeting in real live (or at least in real time)
Some of the core architecture of the KDE KParts component model was developed on the KDE 2 conference AFAIK. I think we might have to do sessions like that at the upcoming Zope/Python conferences ...
That's a very good point. It's even a good point inside ZC. Getting ten people in a room for an extreme programming session has done wonders for our ideas on Zope3. Anybody want to fly to Virginia? :^) Yesterday morning I started hanging out on the #zope IRC channel. Already it has been illuminating. It also creates an atmosphere of understanding. I need to do this more often. --Paul
IMO, Bugzilla won't fix these kinds of problems. I think the first step is to refine what we have while finding better ways to work together.
We definitely need a ZOPE-based approach. What I really don't get is this: We all seem to be building Zope-based systems for communities, public administration, education, etc. to make information flow, from shops to CRM and knowledge management systems. Why the h** can't we do it for ourselves? Joachim
Lennart Regebro wrote:
The best community I have seen is for the Clavia Nord Modular synthesizer. Clavia contributes abolsutely NOTHING to that community. They do, however, listen to it, and implement several of the features that are most requested in that community. And that is not an open source project, so the community can't contribute anything else than ideas.
Needless to say, Nord modular synths are one of the best known in the music world ;-) cheers, Chris
On Friday, November 30, 2001, at 04:18 AM, Lennart Regebro wrote:
What I do agree on is that Zope corp not always seem to *listen* to the community. It is hard to contribute to Zope, and it feels to me that you have to fight to make Zope Corp to things the right way, even when you in fact already have done the work for them. I don't know why that is, or if it is possible to change that. I suspect they simply have far too much to do... :-)
The right way? Who is the judge of that? What is the right way? To compete more with J2EE? To be more like PHP? To dump ZODB in favor of MySQL? Some people are of the opinion that any of these may be "the right way", but that doesn't necessarily mean that they fit with the real direction that Zope Corp wishes to point the architecture in. Supporting a community of thousands and thousands for free is very hard work. Zope Corp is still a small company -- if every developer there could actively participate with the community the way some people prescribe, it might be enough to appease most peoples concerns. But then they're not working on projects that bring in enough money to stay afloat. And if they can't stay afloat, then Zope loses. Granted, being Open Source, Zope could very well continue to be an active project, but losing Zope corp would be a significant stepback as new leaders and directions have to be found from the people in the community - who may very well find that it truely does cost a lot to give software away for free and THEN have to support it for free. It's hard to appreciate just how tough that can be.
The best community I have seen is for the Clavia Nord Modular synthesizer. Clavia contributes abolsutely NOTHING to that community. They do, however, listen to it, and implement several of the features that are most requested in that community. And that is not an open source project, so the community can't contribute anything else than ideas.
And, everyone in that community has somehow put money in Clavia's coffers. The Micro Modular lists for around $600-$800 USD, right? Economically, it's just easier to support a community that has funded you with cash (although I don't know what Clavia's margins on their hardware is - it's not like software which can be easily reproduced for a fraction of its street cost). Clavia probably realizes that by listening to the community, they'll make those users happier, which will lead to increased word-of-mouth advertising for them and bring more happy buyers into the fold. And that money comes back to Clavia. However, anything I do in Zope now that I've left the company (which I did purely for personal reasons - I loved working there but had been away from family and friends for long enough) probably won't bring them any more money. I can evangelize it all I want, but I'm trying to get clients for my own company because I need to scrape together enough cash to stay on the slopes all winter. I don't sell a Zope based solution and then send a portion of that to Zope Corp for use of their product. I give back when I can in the same way many people do - by releasing new Products for Zope. But I'm also - possibly - working on a commercial application for it. And again - aside from a microscopic potential increase in Zope's market share, does Zope Corp get anything out of that? Do they get any money for answering questions I have on the mailing lists, or responding to Tracker/Collector issues I submit? The economics of being an Open Source company are still not very well understood, and I think ZC are doing better than many similar companies that open source a limited version of their flagship software and then build and sell commercial versions on top of that (one of the funniest postcards I ever got was from Enhydra - "A Web Application server for $99? That's the power of Open Source!") Where's the $99 version of Zope? The $499? The $1499? The $25999? Zope Corp hasn't pulled that card out like many other vendors have. There are actually many pieces of Zope that were initially commercial add-ons (or intended to be) that are now all open source. Now, with the understanding that I no longer speak for ZC, I will apologize _a little bit_ for not being an active "member of the community". But when deadlines are setting in and you've got customers on the phone, having the email bell go off every three minutes with seven new messages from four different lists is not always a welcome distraction. Yeesh! - I've been in for two and a half hours here today already and have 84 messages still to scan through, and my task list hasn't even been touched yet. And I don't even have any real obligation to go through those messages. And while I recognize the complaints and peoples rights to say them, don't be to hasty to judge against Zope Corp. The people there are working very hard and have to deal with many of the same software shortcomings that may exist as much as any of us in the community. Give them some credit for the great work that they do. They've given up more for the cause of keeping Zope Open Source than most people will ever truely realize. And, after I'm done dealing with my current situation, I'd be willing to head back east for them again if they'll have me. :) Jeffrey P Shell, jeffrey@cuemedia.com
Where's the $99 version of Zope? The $499? The $1499? The $25999? Zope Corp hasn't pulled that card out like many other vendors have. There are actually many pieces of Zope that were initially commercial add-ons (or intended to be) that are now all open source.
I sometimes have the feeling that we might NEED a $xx(x) version of Zope -- a ready-to-go, preconfigured Zope distro with a decent manual. Not for us, the community, but for the average user. O.k., we could do it for free, but would there be a Red Hat or SuSE Linux distro if it was totally for free? It even CAN be downloaded for free, and still people are willing to pay for it. And the money is needed. Without the support from the major Linux distributors, projects like XFree would probably be in big trouble ... This is a totally different business model than the one Zope Corp. is using right now, but it might help refinancing the overhead a good community needs to have ... Just my 2 (euro)cents ... Joachim
Hi!
This is a totally different business model than the one Zope Corp. is using right now, but it might help refinancing the overhead a good community needs to have ...
Would it have to be done by ZC?
No, of course not. And there could be more than one of course (though we'd need a Zope Standards Base like the LSB then ;-)) Joachim
On Sat, 2001-12-01 at 06:02, Joachim Werner wrote:
Hi!
This is a totally different business model than the one Zope Corp. is using right now, but it might help refinancing the overhead a good community needs to have ...
Would it have to be done by ZC?
No, of course not.
And there could be more than one of course (though we'd need a Zope Standards Base like the LSB then ;-))
See, that is where I'd see ZC's role in a Zope Distribution world. Theirs could be the standard base, with input from the community of course. Naturally, it would not prevent ZC from offering more-than-standard distributions. Bill
You might have a point there. RedHat seem to have quite a functional business model going on, perhaps zope could borrow some ideas from there. I know that many people that currently run Linux (Home and work) would no do so except for RedHat, Suse or Mandrake. Adrian... -- Adrian Hungate All views expressed in this email are those of the whole world, however some people don't realise this yet. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Joachim Werner" <joe@iuveno-net.de> To: "Jeffrey P Shell" <jeffrey@cuemedia.com>; <zope-dev@zope.org> Sent: Saturday, December 01, 2001 12:33 AM Subject: Re: [Zope-dev] Open Letter to zope-dev
Where's the $99 version of Zope? The $499? The $1499? The $25999? Zope Corp hasn't pulled that card out like many other vendors have. There are actually many pieces of Zope that were initially commercial add-ons (or intended to be) that are now all open source.
I sometimes have the feeling that we might NEED a $xx(x) version of Zope -- a ready-to-go, preconfigured Zope distro with a decent manual.
Not for us, the community, but for the average user. O.k., we could do it for free, but would there be a Red Hat or SuSE Linux distro if it was totally for free? It even CAN be downloaded for free, and still people are willing to pay for it. And the money is needed. Without the support from the major Linux distributors, projects like XFree would probably be in big trouble ...
This is a totally different business model than the one Zope Corp. is using right now, but it might help refinancing the overhead a good community needs to have ...
Just my 2 (euro)cents ...
Joachim
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Noone from Zope Corp seems to monitor the list to help out.
That is not my experience at all. I have received answers from Zope corps several times. But sure, most of the answers you get come from the community members. Thats what a community is all about, and thats the hallmark of a good community.
I fully agree that Zope Corp and the Zopers there are really trying to contribute to the lists and they are definitely listening. But still Andrew's main points are right. I talked to people who are in the inner circle of the CVS write-enabled. And even those people still feel that they are not really getting all the info they need. The session management framework (formerly known as CoreSessionTracking, now it is in the core and just called Session) is another example, if my first look was right. The API seems to have changed a lot between the last CST and the final Session release that is part of 2.5 beta. O.k., there still seems to be some backwards-compatibility, but why can't those projects be more public? The tools are there (like CVS) ... Joachim
The session management framework (formerly known as CoreSessionTracking, now it is in the core and just called Session) is another example, if my first look was right. The API seems to have changed a lot between the last CST and the final Session release that is part of 2.5 beta. O.k., there still seems to be some backwards-compatibility, but why can't those projects be more public? The tools are there (like CVS) ...
Mea culpa. One of the problems is that that nothing gets by the BDFL here (Jim), and he required some of the changes. But I admit that I should have kept the fishbowl project more updated. I did update it (lamely), but not well enough. -= C
Chris was just drinking a beer with us at Orbit's twenty minutes ago, and now he's responding to email on a Friday night. That's just sick. I don't think your boss fully appreciates you, number 27. :^) --Paul Chris McDonough wrote:
The session management framework (formerly known as CoreSessionTracking, now it is in the core and just called Session) is another example, if my first look was right. The API seems to have changed a lot between the last CST and the final Session release that is part of 2.5 beta. O.k., there still seems to be some backwards-compatibility, but why can't those projects be more public? The tools are there (like CVS) ...
Mea culpa. One of the problems is that that nothing gets by the BDFL here (Jim), and he required some of the changes. But I admit that I should have kept the fishbowl project more updated. I did update it (lamely), but not well enough.
-= C
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He's also on #zope, chatting and supporting :) On Saturday 01 December 2001 02:02, Paul Everitt wrote:
Chris was just drinking a beer with us at Orbit's twenty minutes ago, and now he's responding to email on a Friday night. That's just sick. I don't think your boss fully appreciates you, number 27. :^)
--Paul
Chris McDonough wrote:
The session management framework (formerly known as CoreSessionTracking, now it is in the core and just called Session) is another example, if my first look was right. The API seems to have changed a lot between the last CST and the final Session release that is part of 2.5 beta. O.k., there still seems to be some backwards-compatibility, but why can't those projects be more public? The tools are there (like CVS) ...
Mea culpa. One of the problems is that that nothing gets by the BDFL here (Jim), and he required some of the changes. But I admit that I should have kept the fishbowl project more updated. I did update it (lamely), but not well enough.
-= C
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Paul Everitt wrote:
Chris was just drinking a beer with us at Orbit's twenty minutes ago, and now he's responding to email on a Friday night. That's just sick.
No, sick was the conversation that happened on #zope from 2am-4am UK time when what felt like half of ZC showed up (most having been to Orbit's?) along with a big European contingent of insomniacs and drunkards... No guesses what category I was in... *hic* Chris
First, I have to thank you for sparking a long-overdue conversation. It's true that we at ZC have been staring at our navels for a while. Though it's reasonable for us to pay first attention to those paying us money, it can become short-sighted. As you pointed out, everyone in Zope needs Zope to become more popular. I also have to apologize for what this build of Mozilla is going to do to this mail message. It's concept of whitespace baffles me. :^) Andrew Kenneth Milton wrote:
Since I seem to be the cause of all hell breaking loose over here, I thought take the opportunity to respond, since I haven't really been given an opportunity to do that. Since this probably going to be my only ever posting to zope-dev, I don't feel constrained to be brief in exercising my right of reply.
I can't comment on what happened to you on zope-dev, as it happened during a period when I wasn't doing my job and paying attention. Though I have a tough time with your method of expression (it's hard to get past the thought that someone abhors what you're doing), I definately appreciate the content of what you have to say. I hope there is a forum in the future where you feel comfortable, otherwise I'll just have to subscribe to your mailing list for daily reminders of my inadequacy. :^) In fact, I started tinkering around with ProductManager last night. Not enough yet to report, but I think it's one of the four or five most important things Zope needs.
I'm not going to apologise for the comments I made, or the manner in which I made them. Those comments were made on a list run by me, basically for my own amusement. If I had posted either of those emails to someone else's list, I'd quite rightly deserve to be fried.
No need to apologize. It's fine to vent. At the point, though, when you want a constructive conversation to improve things, then the venting needs to be put aside. As Seb pointed out, your venting was noticed and a (hopefully appropriate) change was made within 24 hours. Hopefully you can note the good as well as the bad.
I don't make money from Zope Development (I don't make money), I don't run a website, in fact, I don't actually use any of the products I have released. So it's not like I have a vested interest in Zope. My fortunes don't rest on the success or failure of Zope or any one of its components. I live in a country the size of the USA that has the approximate population of New York State. Even if I stood on a busy street corner with a loud hailer, the number of people I could actually influence would be small. This makes me one of the people in the trenches.
It is the people who are in the trenches who are increasingly being disaffected by Zope Corp, it seems as if you're not subscribed to zope-dev, you have no voice, and for most people zope-dev is not an appropriate forum for them to be subscribed to. As some of you know, I was hounded off of the zope@ mailing list for suggesting that there be some other mailing list for more technical discussion. People were very upset, because, they already have a hard time getting any support. Noone from Zope Corp seems to monitor the list to help out. The zope list was manned by people like me volunteering expertise and time to help more of the little people.
Again, I can't comment on the hounding off the list. I remember a number of people expressing hope that you'd stay. Also, I imagine most people reacted to the method of expression rather than the content of the proposal. As you noted, you're free to express yourself any way you please -- but understand that the listeners are free as well to react any way they please. You can't demand a one-way street. I agree with your point, though. We've been in a phase where haven't been engaged. Ultimately that's my fault -- it's my job here at ZC to be connected and make sure folks like you are happy and effective. If you're open to it, I'd like a one-on-one dialog about the problems and suggestions -- as well as prioritization, as there aren't enough resources in the world to do everything at once.
A lot of those people come to the irc channel, which is also rarely if ever visited by anyone from Zope Corp. Most people know that #zope is the place to go when all else fails. The major irony of this is, that most of the people seeking help on #zope are working with it, or consulting with it, and are supported by me and others for free. We are the ones that deal with the 'general zope public.' We are the defenders of the faith.
Last week in Paris I heard great things about the IRC channel. I've never been a part of the IRC culture, so I need to get started.
The Zope Weekly News, which turned into Zope Monthly News, which now has not been updated since October is a joke. It shows Zope Corporation's attitude towards their community. It says "We don't care about our community." I'm sure that's not the feeling of the *individuals* inside Zope Corp, I'm sure it is (or I hope it is) a source of great embarassment to those individuals that work for Zope Corp.
Yes, it's a source of embarassment. However, I don't think the answer is for ZC to do 100% of the ZWN work. This morning (before your note) Steve Alexander and I were talking about this, and I noted that, in KDE, tons of people contribute to and manage the KDE Kernel Cousin. Ultimately, though, I'm the one responsible for the embarassment. No matter which way it's done, it needs to get done. I'll save more on this for my response to Seb's note.
Letting your community showpiece atrophy doesn't show any great passion towards us, it certainly doesn't endear new users to Zope. New users are the only way Zope Corp is going to make more money, unless of course zope.org is just for us non-revenue generating little fish, an inconvenience associated with having Open Source software, not something that promotes and supports the non-paying community.
First, I'm 100% inline with your assertion. In fact, in the last couple of weeks, I've become convinced that the position you describe in the first half of the paragraph should have my exclusive attention. Namely, the _world of_ Zope simply must become 10x bigger this time next year. And it isn't going to get there based on ZC. As noted, we can't meet the myriad of commitments for 1x. Thus, the only way to get 10x is to make ZC be a smaller part of Zope. While it's easy to say and everybody nods their heads when it's said, it isn't easy to _do_. Not just on the ZC side, where people like me need to be more accountable to the community. As Seb noted in his response, is the community *really* ready to take responsibility for specific things? In the second part of your note you mention zope.org, which is a greater issue than ZWN. However, the ultimate answer isn't flogging ZC. Instead, some people need to be willing to put their time/money where there mouth is and make a long-term commitment to be responsible, to participate, and to do better than we've done. Finding these people, facilitating there efforts, and listening to their complaints is probably the most important thing I need to do to achieve 10x.
Noone wants a standardised User Management API more than me. I *want* to have confidence that someone can replace any User Folder with XUF, and it will just work. So when I come across something that says there is a New User Management API, I get excited. I prepare to roll up my sleeves and make the necessary changes to make software I contributed to the community continue to work. I think we all know by now my opinion on what I found, the harshness of the expression of that opinion is directly related to the way that these days Zope Corp seems to be an Ivory Tower and the way they seem to treat the community at large.
In our defense (but meekly), we have begun the process of moving from the cathedral to the bazaar with the CVS contributor process. But it's still early, hasn't expanded fast enough to include more people, and it's effects haven't been noticed yet. I'll be so bold as to grant you the claim of Ivory Tower. You've granted us the acknowledgement that we don't do this out of arrogance, rather we're overcommitted. The question is, what are we -- and that "we" includes you -- going to do about it? Your points have merit and I'm committed to do what I can to change things. Are you? If your response is, "I'm going to ignore zope-dev, ZC, and flame everything from my private universe", then I'll know that I can only count on you to describe the problem. Instead, I prefer to count on you to help me solve the problem.
There are approximately 450 products released by just over 200 people on Zope.org. There are approximately 1000 'entities' subscribed to this list (more to the main list), I represent 0.1% of this community, but, am responsible (but, not soley) for 3% of the total product space available.
No need (at least not with me) to point this out. Your credentials and credibility are at the top of the list. *Numerous* people have emailed me with instructions to "get over the tone, pay attention to the content".
If people want to form an opinion of me based on one email, that's your right. You don't have the right to tell me, that *I* don't have the right to say the things I'm saying. I have earned the right to make these comments, I have contributed time, effort, and code, and I put my money where my mouth is. I'm not some backseat political observer, I am in the trenches I deal with the disaffected, the confused, and the generally pissed off every day. In my efforts, I try to help to make Zope a better product.
You certainly have the right to say what you're saying. Your method of expression leaves people with the same right. Either way, many, many people here value you highly.
You would be hard pressed to find a more stalwart supporter of Zope than me. This doesn't mean that I have to think that everything that leaves the holy temple of Zope Corp is the panacea of web development. My opinions might be wrong, but, they're not wrong simply because something was released by Zope Corp, or written by some person you have attached some god like status to.
Certainly you must understand that people can agree with your opinions but disagree with the tone? Stated differently, I'll make it clear: I agree with many of your points. And I want you to stick around and help get this bandwagon back up to speed.
I will continue to do my thing, but, the way Zope Corp deals with us, the little fish had better change, or there's not going to be much of a community left. Those of you who subscribe to zope-dev who think that your time is too valuable to be spent helping others, well, words fail me.
At 5'4", I'm in no position to call anybody a little fish. :^) --Paul
Thanks Andrew for a heartfelt description of what is happening here. It is clear that unlike the other freeware products like Lenux, JBoss.., Zope has lost all of the advantages of being a freeware product. What I find sad is that the extreme commercialization of Zope is hurting Zope- this discussion list is censored in a way that would not be allowed for most commercial products. I posted a serious bug- Zope throws an exception after trying to resolve a transaction conflict three times. The discussion was quickly moved line and I was told this is not a problem- Not a problem? Give me a break!! This nearly killed my application and cost me several weeks of work. Those who know of these problems can write clean applications but these issues are kept strictly confidential. To the *TRUE* open source community I would just say let us reclaim Zope-even if it means branching. Clark --- Andrew Kenneth Milton <akm@theinternet.com.au> wrote:
Since I seem to be the cause of all hell breaking loose over here, I thought take the opportunity to respond, since I haven't really been given an opportunity to do that. Since this probably going to be my only ever posting to zope-dev, I don't feel constrained to be brief in exercising my right of reply.
I'm not going to apologise for the comments I made, or the manner in which I made them. Those comments were made on a list run by me, basically for my own amusement. If I had posted either of those emails to someone else's list, I'd quite rightly deserve to be fried.
I don't make money from Zope Development (I don't make money), I don't run a website, in fact, I don't actually use any of the products I have released. So it's not like I have a vested interest in Zope. My fortunes don't rest on the success or failure of Zope or any one of its components. I live in a country the size of the USA that has the approximate population of New York State. Even if I stood on a busy street corner with a loud hailer, the number of people I could actually influence would be small. This makes me one of the people in the trenches.
It is the people who are in the trenches who are increasingly being disaffected by Zope Corp, it seems as if you're not subscribed to zope-dev, you have no voice, and for most people zope-dev is not an appropriate forum for them to be subscribed to. As some of you know, I was hounded off of the zope@ mailing list for suggesting that there be some other mailing list for more technical discussion. People were very upset, because, they already have a hard time getting any support. Noone from Zope Corp seems to monitor the list to help out. The zope list was manned by people like me volunteering expertise and time to help more of the little people.
A lot of those people come to the irc channel, which is also rarely if ever visited by anyone from Zope Corp. Most people know that #zope is the place to go when all else fails. The major irony of this is, that most of the people seeking help on #zope are working with it, or consulting with it, and are supported by me and others for free. We are the ones that deal with the 'general zope public.' We are the defenders of the faith.
The Zope Weekly News, which turned into Zope Monthly News, which now has not been updated since October is a joke. It shows Zope Corporation's attitude towards their community. It says "We don't care about our community." I'm sure that's not the feeling of the *individuals* inside Zope Corp, I'm sure it is (or I hope it is) a source of great embarassment to those individuals that work for Zope Corp.
Letting your community showpiece atrophy doesn't show any great passion towards us, it certainly doesn't endear new users to Zope. New users are the only way Zope Corp is going to make more money, unless of course zope.org is just for us non-revenue generating little fish, an inconvenience associated with having Open Source software, not something that promotes and supports the non-paying community.
Noone wants a standardised User Management API more than me. I *want* to have confidence that someone can replace any User Folder with XUF, and it will just work. So when I come across something that says there is a New User Management API, I get excited. I prepare to roll up my sleeves and make the necessary changes to make software I contributed to the community continue to work. I think we all know by now my opinion on what I found, the harshness of the expression of that opinion is directly related to the way that these days Zope Corp seems to be an Ivory Tower and the way they seem to treat the community at large.
There are approximately 450 products released by just over 200 people on Zope.org. There are approximately 1000 'entities' subscribed to this list (more to the main list), I represent 0.1% of this community, but, am responsible (but, not soley) for 3% of the total product space available.
If people want to form an opinion of me based on one email, that's your right. You don't have the right to tell me, that *I* don't have the right to say the things I'm saying. I have earned the right to make these comments, I have contributed time, effort, and code, and I put my money where my mouth is. I'm not some backseat political observer, I am in the trenches I deal with the disaffected, the confused, and the generally pissed off every day. In my efforts, I try to help to make Zope a better product.
You would be hard pressed to find a more stalwart supporter of Zope than me. This doesn't mean that I have to think that everything that leaves the holy temple of Zope Corp is the panacea of web development. My opinions might be wrong, but, they're not wrong simply because something was released by Zope Corp, or written by some person you have attached some god like status to.
I will continue to do my thing, but, the way Zope Corp deals with us, the little fish had better change, or there's not going to be much of a community left. Those of you who subscribe to zope-dev who think that your time is too valuable to be spent helping others, well, words fail me.
-- Totally Holistic Enterprises Internet| | Andrew Milton The Internet (Aust) Pty Ltd | | ACN: 082 081 472 ABN: 83 082 081 472 | M:+61 416 022 411 | Carpe Daemon PO Box 837 Indooroopilly QLD 4068 |akm@theinternet.com.au|
_______________________________________________ Zope-Dev maillist - Zope-Dev@zope.org http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-dev ** No cross posts or HTML encoding! ** (Related lists -
http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-announce http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope )
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I can't decide if this is a hoax or not :-S Can anyone comment? Chris Clark O'Brien wrote:
Thanks Andrew for a heartfelt description of what is happening here.
It is clear that unlike the other freeware products like Lenux, JBoss.., Zope has lost all of the advantages of being a freeware product.
What I find sad is that the extreme commercialization of Zope is hurting Zope- this discussion list is censored in a way that would not be allowed for most commercial products.
I posted a serious bug- Zope throws an exception after trying to resolve a transaction conflict three times. The discussion was quickly moved line and I was told this is not a problem- Not a problem? Give me a break!! This nearly killed my application and cost me several weeks of work.
Those who know of these problems can write clean applications but these issues are kept strictly confidential.
To the *TRUE* open source community I would just say let us reclaim Zope-even if it means branching. Clark
--- Andrew Kenneth Milton <akm@theinternet.com.au> wrote:
Since I seem to be the cause of all hell breaking loose over here, I thought take the opportunity to respond, since I haven't really been given an opportunity to do that. Since this probably going to be my only ever posting to zope-dev, I don't feel constrained to be brief in exercising my right of reply.
I'm not going to apologise for the comments I made, or the manner in which I made them. Those comments were made on a list run by me, basically for my own amusement. If I had posted either of those emails to someone else's list, I'd quite rightly deserve to be fried.
I don't make money from Zope Development (I don't make money), I don't run a website, in fact, I don't actually use any of the products I have released. So it's not like I have a vested interest in Zope. My fortunes don't rest on the success or failure of Zope or any one of its components. I live in a country the size of the USA that has the approximate population of New York State. Even if I stood on a busy street corner with a loud hailer, the number of people I could actually influence would be small. This makes me one of the people in the trenches.
It is the people who are in the trenches who are increasingly being disaffected by Zope Corp, it seems as if you're not subscribed to zope-dev, you have no voice, and for most people zope-dev is not an appropriate forum for them to be subscribed to. As some of you know, I was hounded off of the zope@ mailing list for suggesting that there be some other mailing list for more technical discussion. People were very upset, because, they already have a hard time getting any support. Noone from Zope Corp seems to monitor the list to help out. The zope list was manned by people like me volunteering expertise and time to help more of the little people.
A lot of those people come to the irc channel, which is also rarely if ever visited by anyone from Zope Corp. Most people know that #zope is the place to go when all else fails. The major irony of this is, that most of the people seeking help on #zope are working with it, or consulting with it, and are supported by me and others for free. We are the ones that deal with the 'general zope public.' We are the defenders of the faith.
The Zope Weekly News, which turned into Zope Monthly News, which now has not been updated since October is a joke. It shows Zope Corporation's attitude towards their community. It says "We don't care about our community." I'm sure that's not the feeling of the *individuals* inside Zope Corp, I'm sure it is (or I hope it is) a source of great embarassment to those individuals that work for Zope Corp.
Letting your community showpiece atrophy doesn't show any great passion towards us, it certainly doesn't endear new users to Zope. New users are the only way Zope Corp is going to make more money, unless of course zope.org is just for us non-revenue generating little fish, an inconvenience associated with having Open Source software, not something that promotes and supports the non-paying community.
Noone wants a standardised User Management API more than me. I *want* to have confidence that someone can replace any User Folder with XUF, and it will just work. So when I come across something that says there is a New User Management API, I get excited. I prepare to roll up my sleeves and make the necessary changes to make software I contributed to the community continue to work. I think we all know by now my opinion on what I found, the harshness of the expression of that opinion is directly related to the way that these days Zope Corp seems to be an Ivory Tower and the way they seem to treat the community at large.
There are approximately 450 products released by just over 200 people on Zope.org. There are approximately 1000 'entities' subscribed to this list (more to the main list), I represent 0.1% of this community, but, am responsible (but, not soley) for 3% of the total product space available.
If people want to form an opinion of me based on one email, that's your right. You don't have the right to tell me, that *I* don't have the right to say the things I'm saying. I have earned the right to make these comments, I have contributed time, effort, and code, and I put my money where my mouth is. I'm not some backseat political observer, I am in the trenches I deal with the disaffected, the confused, and the generally pissed off every day. In my efforts, I try to help to make Zope a better product.
You would be hard pressed to find a more stalwart supporter of Zope than me. This doesn't mean that I have to think that everything that leaves the holy temple of Zope Corp is the panacea of web development. My opinions might be wrong, but, they're not wrong simply because something was released by Zope Corp, or written by some person you have attached some god like status to.
I will continue to do my thing, but, the way Zope Corp deals with us, the little fish had better change, or there's not going to be much of a community left. Those of you who subscribe to zope-dev who think that your time is too valuable to be spent helping others, well, words fail me.
-- Totally Holistic Enterprises Internet| | Andrew Milton The Internet (Aust) Pty Ltd | | ACN: 082 081 472 ABN: 83 082 081 472 | M:+61 416 022 411 | Carpe Daemon PO Box 837 Indooroopilly QLD 4068 |akm@theinternet.com.au|
_______________________________________________ Zope-Dev maillist - Zope-Dev@zope.org http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-dev ** No cross posts or HTML encoding! ** (Related lists -
http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-announce http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope )
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! GeoCities - quick and easy web site hosting, just $8.95/month. http://geocities.yahoo.com/ps/info1
_______________________________________________ Zope-Dev maillist - Zope-Dev@zope.org http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-dev ** No cross posts or HTML encoding! ** (Related lists - http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-announce http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope )
Troll! And a funny one at that. (I think.) seb * Chris Withers <chrisw@nipltd.com> [011130 16:28]:
I can't decide if this is a hoax or not :-S
Can anyone comment?
Chris
Clark O'Brien wrote:
Thanks Andrew for a heartfelt description of what is happening here.
It is clear that unlike the other freeware products like Lenux, JBoss.., Zope has lost all of the advantages of being a freeware product.
What I find sad is that the extreme commercialization of Zope is hurting Zope- this discussion list is censored in a way that would not be allowed for most commercial products.
I posted a serious bug- Zope throws an exception after trying to resolve a transaction conflict three times. The discussion was quickly moved line and I was told this is not a problem- Not a problem? Give me a break!! This nearly killed my application and cost me several weeks of work.
Those who know of these problems can write clean applications but these issues are kept strictly confidential.
To the *TRUE* open source community I would just say let us reclaim Zope-even if it means branching. Clark
--- Andrew Kenneth Milton <akm@theinternet.com.au> wrote:
Since I seem to be the cause of all hell breaking loose over here, I thought take the opportunity to respond, since I haven't really been given an opportunity to do that. Since this probably going to be my only ever posting to zope-dev, I don't feel constrained to be brief in exercising my right of reply.
I'm not going to apologise for the comments I made, or the manner in which I made them. Those comments were made on a list run by me, basically for my own amusement. If I had posted either of those emails to someone else's list, I'd quite rightly deserve to be fried.
I don't make money from Zope Development (I don't make money), I don't run a website, in fact, I don't actually use any of the products I have released. So it's not like I have a vested interest in Zope. My fortunes don't rest on the success or failure of Zope or any one of its components. I live in a country the size of the USA that has the approximate population of New York State. Even if I stood on a busy street corner with a loud hailer, the number of people I could actually influence would be small. This makes me one of the people in the trenches.
It is the people who are in the trenches who are increasingly being disaffected by Zope Corp, it seems as if you're not subscribed to zope-dev, you have no voice, and for most people zope-dev is not an appropriate forum for them to be subscribed to. As some of you know, I was hounded off of the zope@ mailing list for suggesting that there be some other mailing list for more technical discussion. People were very upset, because, they already have a hard time getting any support. Noone from Zope Corp seems to monitor the list to help out. The zope list was manned by people like me volunteering expertise and time to help more of the little people.
A lot of those people come to the irc channel, which is also rarely if ever visited by anyone from Zope Corp. Most people know that #zope is the place to go when all else fails. The major irony of this is, that most of the people seeking help on #zope are working with it, or consulting with it, and are supported by me and others for free. We are the ones that deal with the 'general zope public.' We are the defenders of the faith.
The Zope Weekly News, which turned into Zope Monthly News, which now has not been updated since October is a joke. It shows Zope Corporation's attitude towards their community. It says "We don't care about our community." I'm sure that's not the feeling of the *individuals* inside Zope Corp, I'm sure it is (or I hope it is) a source of great embarassment to those individuals that work for Zope Corp.
Letting your community showpiece atrophy doesn't show any great passion towards us, it certainly doesn't endear new users to Zope. New users are the only way Zope Corp is going to make more money, unless of course zope.org is just for us non-revenue generating little fish, an inconvenience associated with having Open Source software, not something that promotes and supports the non-paying community.
Noone wants a standardised User Management API more than me. I *want* to have confidence that someone can replace any User Folder with XUF, and it will just work. So when I come across something that says there is a New User Management API, I get excited. I prepare to roll up my sleeves and make the necessary changes to make software I contributed to the community continue to work. I think we all know by now my opinion on what I found, the harshness of the expression of that opinion is directly related to the way that these days Zope Corp seems to be an Ivory Tower and the way they seem to treat the community at large.
There are approximately 450 products released by just over 200 people on Zope.org. There are approximately 1000 'entities' subscribed to this list (more to the main list), I represent 0.1% of this community, but, am responsible (but, not soley) for 3% of the total product space available.
If people want to form an opinion of me based on one email, that's your right. You don't have the right to tell me, that *I* don't have the right to say the things I'm saying. I have earned the right to make these comments, I have contributed time, effort, and code, and I put my money where my mouth is. I'm not some backseat political observer, I am in the trenches I deal with the disaffected, the confused, and the generally pissed off every day. In my efforts, I try to help to make Zope a better product.
You would be hard pressed to find a more stalwart supporter of Zope than me. This doesn't mean that I have to think that everything that leaves the holy temple of Zope Corp is the panacea of web development. My opinions might be wrong, but, they're not wrong simply because something was released by Zope Corp, or written by some person you have attached some god like status to.
I will continue to do my thing, but, the way Zope Corp deals with us, the little fish had better change, or there's not going to be much of a community left. Those of you who subscribe to zope-dev who think that your time is too valuable to be spent helping others, well, words fail me.
-- Totally Holistic Enterprises Internet| | Andrew Milton The Internet (Aust) Pty Ltd | | ACN: 082 081 472 ABN: 83 082 081 472 | M:+61 416 022 411 | Carpe Daemon PO Box 837 Indooroopilly QLD 4068 |akm@theinternet.com.au|
_______________________________________________ Zope-Dev maillist - Zope-Dev@zope.org http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-dev ** No cross posts or HTML encoding! ** (Related lists -
http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-announce http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope )
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! GeoCities - quick and easy web site hosting, just $8.95/month. http://geocities.yahoo.com/ps/info1
_______________________________________________ Zope-Dev maillist - Zope-Dev@zope.org http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-dev ** No cross posts or HTML encoding! ** (Related lists - http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-announce http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope )
_______________________________________________ Zope-Dev maillist - Zope-Dev@zope.org http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-dev ** No cross posts or HTML encoding! ** (Related lists - http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-announce http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope )
-- [] j a m k i t seb bacon T: 020 7749 7218 F: 020 7739 8683 M: 07968 301 336 W: www.jamkit.com
Clark O'Brien wrote:
What I find sad is that the extreme commercialization of Zope is hurting Zope- this discussion list is censored in a way that would not be allowed for most commercial products.
If by "this discussion list" you mean zope-dev@zope.org, well, it is certainly not censored. Witness, for example, that your email to which I am now replying has reached the list.
I posted a serious bug- Zope throws an exception after trying to resolve a transaction conflict three times.
That is part of Zope's design. It is not a bug. It is more than likely that your application was designed making some incorrect assumptions about the ZODB. -- Steve Alexander Software Engineer Cat-Box limited
Andrew Kenneth Milton writes:
.... It is the people who are in the trenches who are increasingly being disaffected by Zope Corp, it seems as if you're not subscribed to zope-dev, you have no voice, and for most people zope-dev is not an appropriate forum for them to be subscribed to. As some of you know, I was hounded off of the zope@ mailing list for suggesting that there be some other mailing list for more technical discussion. People were very upset, because, they already have a hard time getting any support. I did see many posts to the contrary... Noone from Zope Corp seems to monitor the list to help out. That is definitely wrong.
I see lots of posts from ZC people in almost all Zope related mailing lists (I read): zope zope-cmf zpt zope-db ChrisM Tres, Jens Evan Matt Andreas (Evan) (Brian) Seems, ZC cares about the mailing lists.
The zope list was manned by people like me volunteering expertise and time to help more of the little people. Sure, they will be happy and thank you! Keep on! (I will help you....)
Dieter
participants (29)
-
Adrian Hungate -
Andrew Kenneth Milton -
Andrew Kuchling -
Andy Dawkins -
Andy McKay -
Bill Anderson -
Brad Clements -
Brian Lloyd -
Casey Duncan -
Chris McDonough -
Chris Withers -
Clark O'Brien -
Danny William Adair -
Dieter Maurer -
Jeffrey P Shell -
Joachim Werner -
Lennart Regebro -
Magnus Heino -
Matthew T. Kromer -
Paul Everitt -
Phil Harris -
R. David Murray -
Richard Jones -
Robert Rottermann -
rossini＠blindglobe.net -
seb bacon -
Stephan Richter -
Steve Alexander -
Trevor Toenjes