[Zope-dev] Another open letter. :-)

[Paul Everitt]

Danny William Adair wrote:
[snip]
 > Have you seen this interview?
 > http://www.zopera.org/site/Members/odeckmyn/iv_paul_2001 (recently
 > announced on this list)
 >
 > Quote: "Regarding CMF, we expect it to disappear in its current
 > form, ..."
 >
 > Introduced to us as the "Portal Toolkit", later labeled as "probably
 > evolving into a commercial product" (couldn't find it in the
 > archives when I tried a minute ago, but I know I wasn't dreaming
 > when I read it), then renamed to "Content Management Framework" and
 > the out-of-the-box solution for site developers that need
 > membership, skinning, an easy content management interface, and
 > pluggable add-ons, Paul Everitt now calls it "a big prototype for
 > the new architecture". Although I think that this is not how it all
 > started, not even how it meant to be less than a year ago, you see
 > that your concerns are no longer something to worry about. The
 > "good things" will be taken to the Zope core, the rest will remain
 > interesting only for people who actually "implement".

Yikes!  I need to get a clarification back to Olivier regarding my point 
on all this.

First, the PTK/CMF evolved separately from Zope, which made it move 
pretty quickly.  All along with thought in terms of the PTK/CMF trying 
out things that the more conservative Zope development wasn't going after.

As we started thinking about Zope3 and a component architecture, we took 
a look at some of the ideas in the CMF and felt they were a valid 
approach.  As such, the CMF could be thought of as a shipping prototype 
for ideas that will make it into Zope3.

It's true that much of the CMF code should disappear if Zope3 does its 
job.  Perhaps around 50% of the Python code, for instance.  The 
remainder is in areas that we had mixed success on anyway -- namely, the 
CMFDemo portal doesn't really try to be an out-of-the-box finished 
product.  Most of us would be thrilled to see a different "killer app" 
develop that took the place of this in Zope3.

Certainly existing CMF users shouldn't be worried.  For instance, we're 
planning two important customer engagements that are _just_ starting 
which will be CMF based.  We want to work with people doing projects 
similar to the CMF and get some common ideas/machinery into the 
component architecture.

Regarding the PTK possibly becoming a commercial product...well, some 
evolutionary paths are dead ends. :^)

--Paul