[Zope-dev] The Product API is not easy to use!

[Michel Pelletier]

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> -----Original Message-----
> From: Josh Zeidner [mailto:jmz_phylogenic@hotmail.com]
> Sent: Friday, July 02, 1999 4:56 PM
> To: michel@digicool.com
> Subject: RE: [Zope-dev] The Product API is not easy to use!
> 
> 
> 
> > >
> > >   Are there any licencesd products like Zope?
> > >
> > >   For Instance:
> > >
> > >     Enterprise Java Beans
> > >     WebLogic Server
> > >     Persistance
> > >     Vignette StoryServer
> > >
> > >   -Josh Zeidner
> > >
> >
> >I'm not sure quite what your mean by 'licensed'.  Zope is licensed
> >software under the Zope Public License 1.0.
> >
> >Do you mean commercial?
> >
> >-Michel
> >
> 
>   Hello Micheal,
> 

That's Michel.

>   Thank you for your response.
> 
>   Hmm, maybe my understanding of Zope and Digital Creations 
> is not as good 
> as I thought.  Maybe a better question would be :  are there 
> products from 
> business organizations that are modelled more traditionally( revenue 
> obtained through licenseing ).  Examples of which might be 
> listed above.  On 
> a similar topic, how does Digital Creations obtain revenue?  

We consult for a fee.  This has allways been our business model.  During
the past 3 years, we have developed a killer web application in Python.
So instead of keeping it closed source and having only a dozen
customers, we give it away to get hundreds.  Our clients have never
payed for 'the software' just 'the solution'.

> Do you see this 
> as being a stronger model that that of the more traditional software 
> companies?  

Yes.

> Whats to stop a company such as mine to take Zope 
> and totally 
> bypass Digital Creations?  Has such a thing happened before?

Go ahead.  You are welcome to use any part of Zope in your own product.
In fact, we *want* you to do this.  If you do, however, you must comply
with the license:

# 4. All advertising materials and documentation mentioning
#    features derived from or use of this software must display
#    the following acknowledgement:
# 
#      "This product includes software developed by Digital Creations
#      for use in the Z Object Publishing Environment
#      (http://www.zope.org/)."

You could concievably use our software and not credit us and not tell
us, but then you would have to deal with the snarling killer dogs that
Hadar hires for his lawers.

> 
>   On a less related topic... is Frontier( or any of the 
> products listed 
> above) similar to Zope?
> 

I've never used frontier, so I don't know.  However, I do know that
Frontier and Zope play well together because they speak a similar
protocol, XML-RPC.  Thus, Zope can work as a Frontier backend or vice
versa.  Feature cooperation of competing products is a far stronger
model than feature competition.  Even if Frontier competes with us, who
cares?  Our software is free, they are taking no money out of our
pockets.  And if their software is useful enough for people to pay for
it, and it works very well with Zope, then the chances are higher that
we will score another customer from that relationship.  

In fact, other than Frontier, this is a MAJOR flaw in the other products
you listed.  They don't work with anything but themselves, which is
another way of saying they commoditize identical features between each
other.  They do the same thing, but in a completly incompatable way then
their competetors in the interest of winning over customers and making
money from the sale.  This is a perfectly acceptable business model, but
it's not ours; we feel ours (and in a similar way Frontier's) is
stronger than that.

-Michel

> 
>   -Joshua Zeidner
> 
> 
> 
> 
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