Google has 5.4 millions hits for zope and 0.3 million hits for jboss. I don't think this results is objective. I know a lot of people who know jboss but have never heard of zope.

Although off topic, does some have a clue why google likes zope more than jboss?

Well, Zope is a one-of-a-kind. In the python world, Zope is THE web application server. In the java world, there is WebLogic, WebSphere, WebObjects, JBoss, Resin, tomcat, jetty, Netscape Enterprise, etc. The java market is huge. Because java has had so much marketing muscle behind it, there is a lot more competition than in the python world. But the tools provided by a J2EE server are VERY different from what you get with Zope. Zope is really a app server/dev toolkit, whereas J2EE servers are app server/database connection pooler. Zope has some real strengths (ZCatalog, for example), but it has some weaknesses as well. It's a LOT easier to get an app up in Zope for the first time than in a J2EE server, and for small users, it's a lot easier to maintain as well. As far as scalability, Zope and ZEO are great, but J2EE and EJBs are light years ahead in the scalability and failover categories. We use WebLogic at work, and it's one of the 800 lb. gorillas in the java market. It's a beast to configure and use, but it's got a lot of features built in (clustering, database connection pooling, node manager for remotely starting and stopping servers, message queues for MDBs, automatic, distributed software installation across all nodes in a cluster, etc). Zope (and python) could really benefit from some of the features WebLogic and java offer. Databases are a really good example. Databases on zope/python are too hard to set up and configure. With java, you download the db's JDBC driver, put it in your classpath, reference it by name, and off you go. With zope/python, every database requires downloads, C compiles, configuration, and some prayer that the developer tested on your platform.