[Zope-dev] Re: Two visions

[Philipp von Weitershausen]

Jim Fulton wrote:
> 2) In an alternate vision, Zope 2 evolves to Zope 5.

+1 as already discussed at PyCON.

>    - Zope 5 will be the application server generally known as Zope.  It
>      will be backward compatible (to the same degree that Zope 2
>      releases are currently backward compatible with previous Zope 2
>      releases) with Zope 2.  Zope 5 will similarly be backward
>      compatible with Zope 3 applications built on top of the current
>      Zope 3 application server.
> 
>      Note that Zope 5 will leverage Zope 3 technologies to allow a
>      variety of configurations, including a Zope 2-like configuration
>      with implicit acquisition and through-the-web development, and a
>      Zope 3-like configuration that looks a lot like the current Zope
>      3 application server.  Maybe, there will be a configuration that
>      allows Zope 2 and Zope 3 applications to be combined to a
>      significant degree.
> 
>    - Zope 3 will explode. :)
> 
>      For many people, Zope 3 is first a collection of technologies
>      that can be assembled into a variety of different applications.
>      It is second a Zope 2-like application server.  I think that
>      these folks aren't really interested in the (Zope 2-like)
>      application server.
> 
>      Zope 3 will continue as a project (or projects) for creating
>      and refining these technologies.  
> 
>      (It would probably make sense for this activity to to have some
>       name other than "Zope".  On some level, the logical name would
>       be "Z" (pronounced "Zed" :).  An argument against "Z" is that 
>       it would be hard to google for, but Google handles such queries
>       quite well and I'd expect that we'd move to the top of Google Z
>       search results fairly quickly.  However, I'll leave naming
>       decisions to experts. ;)

I would vote for spelling out Zed (which would also be a little easier
to google but might create trademark problems). The namespace package
could either be 'z' or 'zed'.

Then again, I really should take Jim's side and stay out of naming
decisions.

>    Advantages of this vision:
> 
>    - Zope 2 users don't need to leave Zope 2. 
> 
>    - Zope 3 doesn't have to reproduce all Zope 2 features.
> 
>    - There wouldn't be confusion about 2 Zopes.
> 
>    It is important that Zope 5 be backward compatible with both Zope 2
>    and Zope 3, although not necessarily in the same
>    configuration. Many people are building Zope 3 applications today
>    and they should not be penalized.

I'll note that while Zope will remain to be the application server (in
its Zope 5 incarnation), you should and would still be able to create
WSGI-capable object-publishing applications with the Zed pieces fairly
easily, for example when you don't need the full-blown Zope experience.

I will also note that just because Zope 2 won't die, it doesn't mean we
shouldn't clean it up. Eventually, Zope should mostly be reusing things
from Zed. A Zope distribution would include a fair number of Zed eggs
and the Zope-specific things should live under the 'Zope2' namespace
package. Fortunately we're already starting with cleaning up some of the
top-level packages (zLOG, TAL, StructuredText) in Zope 2.10.

Philipp