[Zope-PTK] Re: Wizards

[Shalabh Chaturvedi]

Paul Everitt wrote:
> A couple of comments..
>
> Could someone take some time to summarize this discussion in the Wiki
> setup in the PTK area:
>
>   http://www.zope.org/Products/PTK/  (can't remember the URL for the
> Wiki)
>
> I've wanted the PTK (and Zope Mozilla) to be a joint development effort
> with the community.  So far one entity has stepped forward and gotten
> CVS access, thought there hasn't been much activity.
>
> Digital Creations needs to find the right rhythym to a more open
> development cycle.  At this point, I'm not sure if the lack of
> participation is due to lack of engagement on our part or the
> community's part.

My $0.02 on this:

I don't think DC lacks in spirit but I feel that some systems are not in place
to involve and encourage possible participants. This has mostly to do with the
publicly available website and resources.

For comparison here is a list of 'good' os projects, some big, some small:
 http://www.mozilla.org/
 http://www.gnome.org or rather  http://developer.gnome.org/
 http://java.apache.org/
 http://www.enhydra.org/
 http://www.jabber.org/

1. The ubiquitous 'Get Involved' link and associated details are missing from
    both the PTK and ZopeMoz projects. Anyone browsing doesn't know how
   (or even whether) he can contribute.

2. Visible Activity: Almost all sites above have 'status', 'news' etc inline
    right on the front page. They _look_ alive.

3. Developer Resources: Documentation (is being worked on, I believe), External
    links, Access to Issues (mentioned by Andrew in his reply), Feature lists
    and so on are all loved by developers.

4. Identity: Currently both the said projects would appear to be some sort of
    extension to Zope, or _sub_projects. This is not very encouraging for
    external developers (who are not yet or only recently a part of the
    Zope community) since they see that value of the work they might do will
    be lost in this huge thing. The people within the community and capable
    of contributing are either already in DC or doing so for core Zope. This
    makes pulling people from outside more important (and beneficial) than
    distributing the existing Zope developers.

For ZopeMoz: IMO, people with Mozilla knowledge can contribute more than
people with Zope Zen (with the same effort). Since they would come from outside
Zope, the above points become more weighty.

Thanks,
Shalabh
______________________________
Shalabh Chaturvedi
http://advogato.org/person/shalabh/