[Zope-dev] The bleak Future of Zope?

[Martijn Faassen]

Stephan Richter wrote:

> For Zope 3 however, I can give a very well-informed opinion. Philipp privately 
> pointed out to me that people exected Zope 3 technologies to arrive earlier 
> in Zope 2, such as the CA and principals maybe. 

Note that you were one of those people, in 2002. I remembering you 
rushing schema/forms as you were going to use it on a customer project. 
It still ain't done.

> Finally, we just had no bandwidth for it! Who was to 
> support the Zope 3 in Zope 2? At the end it would have been Jim and it 
> distract him from finishing Zope 3.

On and off I've tried to make the component architecture work in Zope 2, 
and from a Python level it *should* be easy. I just want to be able to 
do adapter lookup on Zope 2 objects, in product code; no other Zope 2 
integration is necessary. Unfortunately right now this is *difficult*. 
The only way to make it work is with a really unwieldy FrankenZope setup 
. I spent hours trying to get it to work but in the end I gave up; I saw 
some recipes more recently I still have to try, but unwieldy it is.

Another alternative, one I've been proposing for what, half a year now, 
and which actually installs easily, is patching the interfaces package 
so that it doesn't try to use __implements__ but something else (as this 
conflicts with Zope 2's usage of it). Keep them separate but allow 
people to use Zope 3 interfaces in Zope 2.7. But while I've proposed 
this over and over again, I'm just blocked over and over again.

In my mind this strategy of blocking people who are willing and able 
from starting integrating Zope 3 technology into Zope 2 is pretty 
stupid. Not technically stupid, but it doesn't make strategic sense at  all.

Of course, in theory Zope 2.8 with integrated Zope 3 interfaces is 
already there. :) To quote Jim:

 > I expect Zope 2.8 to be released no later than February.

I displayed some skepticism about this at the time.

So, while I have not much in the way of technical comments on Zope 2 or 
Zope 3, I do think some strategic mistakes have been made in the past. 
No wonder people are skeptical about any Zope 3 release plans now; 
they've been burned too often in the past.

I know if I want to speed things up I should volunteer, but I have my 
hands full already.

But if you let me follow my strategy for Zope 2 integration, I *will* 
make time. It's clear that the official strategy is failing; not from 
technical grounds but from a strategic point of view.

Regards,

Martijn