[Zope-PTK] 'expirable' objects?

[deano]

I've been sitting in meetings the past week hearing about some of my
company's web ventures, and reading back through the various Zope lists for
interesting tidbits. A strange, Reese's-esque mixing occurred, which brings
me to my question:

I've seen talk, I think here on the PTK list, for including support of an
'event' type - similar to news, but attached to specific dates/date ranges
instead of being based entirely on a concept of
freshness/daycount-til-expiry. It occurs to me that if implemented, it might
be better to do it ala 'discussables' - that is, anything can be made
'eventable/expirable' - including users*. I say this because my company is
looking to expand an existing subscription-based site, and allow for free
'trial' memberships.

While it's perhaps a slight* niche-need, I would think in general having
support out of the box for user accounts that expire would be a Good
Thing(tm). Has anyone done anything like this? I can see many applications
for 'expirables' - passwords, inactive accounts, banner ads, and even really
old content (which is already* handled by various products, but could
perhaps be rolled into this somehow to make things easier on everyone).

I really need to get the whole
posting-ideas-for-projects-but-not-really-doing-anything-useful-to-help
thing under control, but this just seemed like something I should mention
before things solidify to the point that it would be excruciatingly hard to
add if other people like the idea.

Sorry if this has been brought up a million times already, but using all the
search terms I could think of, I couldn't find anything in the archives
about it.

-Deano