[Zope-dev] Re: The bleak Future of Zope?

[Jim Fulton]

Andreas Jung wrote:
> Some remarks from my side as a Zope2 core developer on this issue:
> 
> The Z2 community and development is currently at a bad point:
> 
> - very few people are contributing to the Z2 in terms of new code and 
> bug fixes
>    (see the tons of open bugs in the collector)

In the last year, 37 people make 4215 checkins to the Zope 2
repository.

This doesn't seem to shabby to me.

Here's the breakdown by year:

Year checkins people
2002 7090     33
2003 5276     34
2004 1103     24 # First 3 1/2 months

There is some decline, as one would expect in a mature
product.

These numbers don't include CMF and Plone.

I'd like to see a lot more contributions.  But this still looks
like a pretty healthy development community to me.


> - very few people are willing to contribute to documentation

No one likes to write documentation. I think we're making some progress
in this area in Zope 3 that I think will feed back to Zope 2.

> The reasons for this situation from my prospective:
> 
> - Lots of Z2 people are working now  on Plone projects. Plone currently 
> attracts more people
>    because the important and interesting projects are done there. Paul 
> Everits goal to grow
>    Zope by 10 times might happen through Plone, not through Zope itself

Is that bad?

> - The Z2 development is badly managed. The 2.7 release has been delayed 
> for one year or so.

You keep saying that, but you don't offer to help. We begged for
help with the Zope 2.7 release.  AFAIK, we got very little, so it fell
to us.

> 
> - ZC is currently the bottleneck for Z2. 

No, we're not. And it has nothing to do with how much time we spend on
releases. Any time someone wants to help with or lead the release process,
we'd be thrilled to support them in doing so. If the community wants more
frequent releases, they need to help. It sounds like people are trying out
amd giving feedback on the head. That's great! I'd really like to see 2.8 get
out soon.

...

> - The zope.org community site is a mess. Lots of outstanding problems 
> are not fixed, the performance
>    of the site is more than poor (it takes ages to login, it takes ages 
> to load pages),
>    usability (e.g. when you perform a software release) is bad.

Yes, that's a bad situation.  We (meaning the Zope community) need to do
something about this. Sigh.


...

> 
> We need for Zope2
> 
>  - a better and open management for Z2 releases:

Please be specific.

Better in what way? Open in what way? In what way have we not been open?

...

 > If ZC can not provide
> the resources in terms
>     of time and manpower, the coordination and release management should 
> be given
>     to the community. I am sure that more are willing to contribute more 
> than at the moment.

Great! Where are they?  The community led the release of 2.6. I think
that worked pretty well.  We asked for, but didn't get volunteers for
the Zope 2.7 release.

If anyone wants to help with or lead the 2.8 release, I'd *love*
to hear from them.


> - a clear statement from ZC to the future of Zope 2.

We've said many times, and I'll say again, that Zope 2 will be with us for some
time.  We won't stop working on Zope 2 until Zope 3 is done (meaning does
everything that Zope 2 does) and there is a clean migration path.

We don't know, at this point, what form that path will take. We just
haven't figured it out yet.

Our short term strategy is to narrow the gap between Zope 2 and Zope 3, by
having them share more and more software over time.  This is what the
Zope 2.8 and Zope 2.9 releases will be about, in addition to community-developed
enhancements, of course.


 > Zope 2.8 and Zope
> 2.9 are considered
>    as a migration path for Zope 3

Yes

 > where the Z2 support should be dropped
> after these releases

No. We've *never* said that. I fully expect Zope 2 releases after Zope 2.9.


...

>> From my own prospective as developer I would like to see that Z2
> 
> development over the next
> two or three years continues because there is too much Z2 legacy code in 
> the world

Of course. No one is suggesting that we stop development of Zope 2.

...


 > To be
> honest I doubt that large
> custom applications can be migrated with a justifiable amount of time 
> and money (just because
> they are completely bound to Z2 components and its architecture).

I don't know. You may be right, but I don't think so. We'll have to wait
and see.

> To clarify my standpoint: I am not an opponent of Zope3 but Zope 3 does 
> not convince me
> in the current stage and gives me little attraction for the projects I 
> am working on....it just can
> not compete with Zope 2 if you are building large-scale systems at this 
> time.

Absolutely!  Nor should it try to compete at this time.  If you want
the same level of functionality that's in Zope 2, then use Zope 2.

Zope 3 isn't there yet. OTOH, Zope 3 does have some advantages for some
applications. That's why people are building production apps with it now,
even though there isn't a production release.  That's why we're working
very hard to make a production-quality release of what we have now, even
though it doesn't do everything that it needs to do in the long term.

Jim

-- 
Jim Fulton           mailto:jim at zope.com       Python Powered!
CTO                  (540) 361-1714            http://www.python.org
Zope Corporation     http://www.zope.com       http://www.zope.org