[Zope-dev] Zope Corporation's Initial Reaction on the ZF Comments

[Hadar Pedhazur]

My first attempt to post to this list bounced, because I'm not a
subscriber. Jim enabled me to post, so I'm resending, without
cc'ing the z3lab list again. If you hit reply-all, please add
z3lab at lists.nuxeo.com to the cc list (if you're allowed to post
there as well :-)


Hi all. Whew, lots of traffic, with good ideas and comments
made by all. While all of us at Zope Corp appreciate the
input, we can't lose sight of two points:

1) Even though lots of the "Rock Stars" of the Zope
Community are on one or both of these lists, not all are,
and certainly not the entire Zope Community (especially
_customers_), so these lists cannot substitute for the
entire input stream.

2) We have called for an International IRC chat to discuss
this next Tuesday, and tried to pick a time that could work
for people from the West Coast of the US all the way to
hardy souls in Asia, but at least Eastern Europe. Until
people can weigh in and get a sense of everyone's responses,
this list is just fodder for that discussion.

As such, it is highly unlikely that I will post again on
this specific thread to these lists before the IRC, so
_please_ don't be offended if you have a fantastic rebuttal
to a point that I try to make here, and don't get a
response. I just subscribed to the z3lab list (I'm not on
dev), and will see your response, and hopefully prepare a ZC
response for the IRC.

OK, enough with the background, on to make some points :-)

I found all of the discussion interesting, but I am also
confused by some of it. Specifically, the use of the Plone
Foundation as the model that we should all aspire to.

If I understand my facts correctly, the Plone Foundation was
kicked off (and likely funded by) Computer Associates (CA).
They still have 2 board seats as far as I can see. In fact,
for all the rhetoric about "individuals", each board member
has their company named after them, which implies to me that
people looking at that list should assume that they vote
the way their company would want them to, not the way they
feel about specific issues.

Specifically, if Norm Patriquin of CA leaves CA, will he
remain a board member, or does CA have some right to appoint
another director in his place? If the answer is that CA
controls the board seat, then please let's stop pretending
that this is all about "individuals".

It's obvious that companies do not vote, individuals vote.
It is also obvious that individuals who represent companies
are more likely to vote in a direction that is good for
their company. Nothing wrong with that (IMHO) as long they
can't force something on the rest of the members.

Second, if we had adopted the Plone Foundation organization
verbatim, just changing the word Plone to Zope, would that
have been 100% satisfactory to everyone in the Zope world?
If so, that would surprise me, but more importantly, it
would still have been a "unilateral" move on our part, not
to even allow potential dissenters a say. In other words,
there is no one model that will work for everyone, and we
are being careful not to set _anything_ in stone until we
hear everyone's thoughts.

If we intended to act unilaterally, and in only our
interests, we would have announced a completed Foundation
with a "take it or leave it" attitude, or we would have put
a very short date on getting it done. Instead, we announced
that it would be done by the end of October 2005, so that
_this_ process could have a real chance to succeed in an
open manner.

No one has a gun to our head to do this, and in fact, no one
has the slightest leverage on us to do this. We are doing it
because we _want_ to, because we think it's the _right thing
do_, and because we think the timing is right with Zope 3
ready for prime time, and ready to explode. If we wanted to
try and retain the maximum benefit from that explosion, we
would probably just keep it all to ourselves. We are not,
and we would like at least the benefit of the doubt as to
our motives, if not an actual "Thank You" :-)

Like Stefane, we too are slightly leaning towards an Eclipse
model. In that model, committers are first-class members,
and do _not_ pay dues! Companies and Customers (in their
term "Consumers") are first-class members too, but not only
pay dues (don't worry, we won't charge what they do ;-), but
also _have to commit development resources_. No one vendor
has _any_ control of _anything_ in the Eclipse Foundation,
but they don't apologize for the fact that the underlying
software is _strategic_ to the Vendor organizations in their
attempt to make a profit.

Stefane Fermigier wrote:
> IMHO, "vendor-neutral" means, in this context, that the
> Foundation must take into account the interests of all the
> stakeholders (individual hackers, vendors, customers), and
> shouldn't be interpreted as "vendor-free".

I agreed, and would add that "vendor-neutral" can also (and
IMHO should) be "vendor-friendly". Let's not forget that ZPL
is not GPL. We chose a commercially friendly license 7 years
ago, and have only made it "friendlier" to people who want
to profit from Zope each time we changed it. Why would we
spin off the copyright to the code in a _less_ commercially
friendly way. Our version of commercial friendliness is
equally friendly to individuals and companies, both of who
peacefully co-exist in the Zope ecosystem.

To summarize, we are doing this for the benefit of all. No
matter how bad the Foundation ends up (in the opinion of any
individual or company), if they have an interest in Zope,
they will already be better off. Under all circumstances,
the copyright will be held by the Foundation, and the
Foundation's right to call the software "Zope" will exist
forever, so all of the previous doomsday predictions about
Zope Corp being bought and the Zope trademark used to stop
people from working on software called Zope will be over.

No to some specific points...

Paul Everitt
> Can you assure us regarding the most fundamental points:

> 1) The Zope Foundation will not have any special terms for
> any companies, unless those terms are approved by the
> membership.

Correct. There will be no special terms. It is possible that
there will be one exception to this, but this too hasn't
been decided yet. Perhaps, as the "reward" for Zope
Corporation donating all of the current copyright to the
Foundation, Zope Corporation will be have a permanent board
seat. That won't give them any special powers, but will be a
recognition of their original contribution.

> 2) Voting, bylaws, policies, and *ownership of assets*
> will be in the hands of the developers acting as members.
> Minor issues are delegated to a freely elected board.

Yes. The Foundation (and therefore its members) own all of
the assets. As for whether only "Minor" issues get raised to
the board, I'm not sure what the intent of that is. In
general, even major issues (not code check-ins, which could
be construed as a "Minor" issue) can and should be discussed
by the board, but then should be presented to the membership
for a vote, according to the bylaws.

> 3) There are no special terms or negotiation points that
> favor one group over another.  For example,
> CPS-the-product will not be shipped with Z3ECM unless we
> agree.

Obviously!

Paul Everitt wrote:
> The ASF has companies like IBM that put legions of
> developers on the code.  They can live with this policy.
> And Apache seems to flourish.

Correct. Of course, when the body of work known as Eclipse
was first developed at IBM, which Apache was _not_, somehow
they chose to create a new structure (The Eclipse
Foundation), rather than simply choosing the ASF as the
model. So, while they are obviously fine with ASF as
members, when their own original contribution was at stake,
they went another route.

> I can't think of any open source foundation that has
> company voting in the governance.  There is a role for
> companies, as sponsors.  But, not in the governance.

Stefane pointed out the Eclipse Foundation already, so it's
a little surprising that you are still looking for an
example of another successful open source Foundation that is
also openly vendor friendly, if not vendor driven.

***********************************************************

Again, it is highly unlikely that I will respond again
before the IRC, even if you are purposely "provocative", so
please don't take any personal offense!

Thanks for reading this far!