This is really more about how you make decisions than anything else. A couple of years ago, I was CIO at a venture funded "dot-com" startup company. We were well funded and pretty savvy. I decided to go with IBM Web Sphere for our core e-commerce package. Why? Lots of reasons: 1) IBM was able to bundle hardware, software, professional services and FINANCING in a single package. 2) We were able to get a staff of IBM folks on site pronto to jump start the project. 3) I knew my board of directors wouldn't bat an eye if I told them I needed to spend $1.5 million on the site if it was with IBM, but they would be nervous as hell if I told them I was going open source. On the other hand, if I were putting together a new architecture today, I would almost certainly elect to go with a 100% open source model. I believe the offerings have matured to the point that these are stable, business solutions, and the community of free and paid support options has reached a critical mass such that a responsible CIO can go open source and not worry about killing the company. At the end of the day, these decisions are not made on the basis of "which is better". They are made on the basis of "does any of these alternatives have an intolerable downside risk". That is a far more important consideration. You didn't say, but if you are looking at J2EE servers, be sure to look at JBoss. Jeff Robb Allen wrote:

Honestly, how does Zope compare to some of the big names such as BEA and WebSphere? My company is looking at spending a lot of money in the Application Server realm, and I wondered how Zope stacks up against them. We're two shakes of a pen away from purchasing something, and I'd like to at least come back with an open-source solution just so that we can compare something.

Fire away. I need as much ammo as I can get (although, honestly, I'm leaning towards BEA)

Honestly, how does Zope compare to some of the big names such as BEA and WebSphere? My company is looking at spending a lot of money in the Application Server realm, and I wondered how Zope stacks up against them. We're two shakes of a pen away from purchasing something, and I'd like to at least come back with an open-source solution just so that we can compare something.

For the price of Zope, you can probably afford to have somebody take a week read the docs and kick the tires. Even if you don't conclude Zope is the right tool to carry the bulk of your load, you may find Zope to be an excellent fit for part of the project... another tool for your bag of tricks. Maybe Zope can front an executive interface subsystem (aka "dashboard"), or something. Maybe Zope helps your development team collaborate via some off-the-shelf Zope package. -- Bruce Tong | Got me an office; I'm there late at night. Sr. Software Engineer | Just send me e-mail, maybe I'll write. Electronic Vision / FITNE | zztong@pugsly.ev.net | -- Joe Walsh for the 21st Century