[Zope-dev] Open Letter to zope-dev

[Lennart Regebro]

From: "Andrew Kenneth Milton" <akm@theinternet.com.au>
> Noone from Zope Corp seems to monitor the list to help out.

That is not my experience at all. I have received answers from Zope corps
several times. But sure, most of the answers you get come from the community
members. Thats what a community is all about, and thats the hallmark of a
good community.

> The major irony of this is, that most of the people seeking help on
> #zope are working with it, or consulting with it, and are supported by
> me and others for free. We are the ones that deal with the 'general
> zope public.' We are the defenders of the faith.

I'm not sure I understand why this is ironic. I guess I have missed someting
in the "all-hell-breaking-loose" part of things. :-)

Zope if free and open source. It is therefore unavoidable that the community
has to support itself, becuase Zope corp doesn't make any money from that
software. You could say that this is "the price" that you pay for the "free"
software. :-)
Most of the times you will however receive faster and better support from
communities than direct from any companys support. So it's a low price to
pay.

What I do agree on is that Zope corp not always seem to *listen* to the
community. It is hard to contribute to Zope, and it feels to me that you
have to fight to make Zope Corp to things the right way, even when you in
fact already have done the work for them. I don't know why that is, or if it
is possible to change that. I suspect they simply have far too much to do...
:-)

The best community I have seen is for the Clavia Nord Modular synthesizer.
Clavia contributes abolsutely NOTHING to that community. They do, however,
listen to it, and implement several of the features that are most requested
in that community. And that is not an open source project, so the community
can't contribute anything else than ideas.