I'll take the blame on this miscommunication. I'm the one that told Gary not to take support contracts on PTK. We have a nearly ironclad support policy: we don't support stuff that isn't official. We won't support ZDiscussions, for instance. If we had to support everything we made available, then we'd stop making as much stuff available. Consulting, on the other hand, is a different story. As Ethan noted, we use PTK stuff in our consulting engagements, because we are directly involved in the development of the solution and know where the bodies are buried. :^) PTK is part of our march towards getting into content management, and I agree that we need to march quickly to a 1.0 release. --Paul Paul Everitt Digital Creations paul@digicool.com 540.371.6909 ----------------------------------------- The Open Source Zope application server http://www.zope.org/ ----------------------------------------- Dennis Nichols wrote:
At 11/29/00 03:42 PM, ethan mindlace fremen wrote:
Dennis Nichols wrote:
At 11/28/00 11:34 AM, albert boulanger wrote:
Whether to go with portal products from Plumtree or iPlanet.
If this implies that you are considering using Zope's PTK, then you should be aware of this: You can *not* get commercial support from Digital Creations for PTK because PTK is not a released product. If you think you may need such support before PTK gets to 1.0, then you had best not use the PTK. But that's no reason to not use the rest of Zope.
This needs to be clarified. We actively do consulting with the PTK. If you want to enter into a consulting contract with Digital Creations that involves the PTK, that's not a problem.
If you decide you want to use the PTK yourself, there exists a mailing list and a product tracker. (see http://www.zope.org/Products/PTK ) The PTK is under heavy development and is not a full release yet, so that does need to be taken into account if you wish to use it yourself.
What Ethan says, however true it may be, is contrary to my experience. I worked on developing a site based on PTK for several months and was within a month of going live, but had problems I could not solve, either alone or with the help of the mailing lists. I contacted DC via email, explained what my problems were, and asked how to arrange for consulting time. That was 11 weeks ago, on 10 Sept 2000. The very next day I received an email from Gary Graham (gary@digicool.com, Director, Sales & Marketing) stating:
"PTK is a 0.01 release and not commercially supported yet. Zope is commercially supported yet. Zope.org is the best PTK source at present until we are able to release a commercially supportable version."
Of course, PTK wasn't a 0.01 release at that point, but the message was clear. That caused me to (a) look for a substitute not using Zope, of which I found nothing worth considering, and (b) expend an extra two months redeveloping the site, still using Zope but not using the PTK. This caused substantial lateness in the project launch as well as considerable additional expense.
As you might imagine, I was none too pleased at not being able to obtain consulting in September. To hear that consulting really was available isn't about to make me any happier!
So Ethan, what is the story here?
-- Dennis Nichols nichols@tradingconnections.com
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