Albert said:
Our client thought that the recent VC money was about 1/2 what would be needed to make it fly. My argument is that money is leveraged by the active Zope community so a crux in my logic is how strong this community is.
The "1/2" the capital needed" part is a puzzling assumption. Is your client trying to map some business school model onto DC / Zope? If so, you are absolutely correct to point out that Zope is Open Source, and has excellent support from DC, and the Zope Community, which by the way includes lot's of other folks using Zope in real world enterprises. Most of all, it's very important for your client to understand DC's business model, and the fact that the new VC Capital will be used to scale DC to meet the already explosive demand for Zope based solutions. As a services company, no doubt DC has grown accustomed to meeting paycheck schedules by fulfilling the requirements of an expanding client list. The investment, based on the press release, etc., will be applied to making more of the same happen sooner. This is just my take on the public information, I have no ties to DC, other than as a Zope and Python fan (and hopelessly bedazzled groupie). If your client is sketchy about these details, it may be up to you to help them fill in the blanks. Have they checked out the Zope.org site, specifically Testimonials http://www.zope.org/Resources/Testimonials and Case Studies? http://www.zope.org/Resources/CaseStudies Some of these are old, but there are some pretty good hints there re. what folks have done with, and think about, Zope. Open Source in general can be disorienting at first glance. There are several "pages" out there with interviews where Paul Everitt answers questions about DC's business model, etc. Check these out: http://www.zope.org/Resources/Media http://www.bizjournals.com/washington/stories/1999/05/24/focus4.html and other articles here http://www.troubleshooters.com/tpromag/199906/_digcreate.htm and elsewhere on the Web. Later, Jerry S.