Eron Lloyd wrote:

Does anyone think it would be practical/feasible to develop a groupware platform in Zope at this point?

I think that is not only possible, but a very logical idea. One thing is being able to publish web pages. But in the future we will need to publish emails, calendar items, news, content etc. We will need to keep trakc of who has gotten what information, and follow information flow in it's own little thread. Like a CRM system. And there is no reason why any kind of comunication should be left out of the system. Imagine: You publish an article on the website. From your list of users you either select some of them that you know are interrested in the article, or they have added themself to a mailing list. So they get the news that the article is posted. Some of them read it. Some of them comments the article on the website, other send you an email. Some icq's or Jab' a comment. A few journalists phone you up and talks to you about an interview or more info. A company calls because they want you to do a presentation. You make appointments with them and add them to your calendar. Normally all this information would end up in different mailboxes scattered all around. It would be so nice if all of that comunication would be stored in one place. Especially if we expand that little scenario to a whole company with different people on the inside talking to different people on the outside.

Should I hold off for a while, and let Zope 3 gel some more, or am I completely off my gourd in attempting this?

Hmm ... You should definitely not start doing it in Zope 3 at this time. Perhaps do version 0.1 in the current Zope version, and then move it when Zope3x becomes stable?

I've gotten some inspiration from that CrankShaft Zope product from Spoke Technologies. Does anyone know what happened to them, anyways? This is the sort of thing I'd like to emulate, only it would be an open-source platform and target community groups, grassroot activists, and small non-profit agencies.

Any group where many to many comunication is going on would benefit from such a system. regards Max M

Should I hold off for a while, and let Zope 3 gel some more, or am I completely off my gourd in attempting this?

No, and no. :^) Some more resources on the net. Zope related: Proiektor (from Iuveno) http://demo.iuveno-net.de/iuveno/Products/Proiektor Amphora Light http://www.amphora.ee/freeware/ Not Zope related: Jon Udell, author of "Practical Internet Groupware" http://udell.roninhouse.com/ Brainware http://dev.brainworkers.net/ The last one is because I know the guys. ;^) It doesn't look like much, but there is interesting theory on the main site. Philosophy http://www.brainworkers.net/eng/philos_eng.html Documents http://www.brainworkers.net/eng/dowload_eng.html -- "I was wondering if there's any kind of definitive nickname for Perl programmers, the way we call ourselves Pythonistas?" - Aahz Maruch "Masochists." - Daniel Klein Nicola Larosa - nico@tekNico.net