[Zope3-dev] Re: [Zope-dev] Two visions

[Stephan Richter]

On Wednesday 01 March 2006 11:12, Jim Fulton wrote:
> What do you think the current roadmap is?  I'm not sure we agree onwhat it
> is. That's a huge problem.

The current roadmap, as far as I understand it based on your comments and 
feedback from the community, is as follows:

Primary objective
-----------------

Bring Zope 2 and 3 closer together by sharing more packages. Once they are 
close enough, develop a method of making them one without burdening either 
development team.

Current Approach
----------------

1. Integrate comparable Zope 3 packages into Zope 2 (as Andreas does right now 
   with page templates). If this integration requires the Zope 3 packages to 
   be extended/improved, so be it.

2. Provide a way for Zope 2 developers to use most, if not everything, that 
   Zope 3 has to offer. This is currently achieved using Five.

Results
-------

Here are a couple success stories of this approach:

0. Zope 2 developers, while making their living, start learning the Zope 3 
   philosophy which is much more important than learning all the features.

1. Martijn is slowly porting Silva to Zope 3, piece by piece. I let him 
   elaborate on that.

2. Several Zope 2 products emerged that rely on Zope 3 technologies, but are 
   available for Zope 2 as well. An example is Andreas' TextIndexNG.

3. The Plone community has developed a method for building a more robust 
   framework. That initiative is known as Cubed. It will develop pure Zope 3 
   component that will be directly usable in the current Plone stack.

Overall I think, the Zope sub-communities just became comfortable with that 
approach and starting thriving on it. At least that is my impression from the 
Snow Sprint. We have them finally going and do something with Zope 3. It 
would be fatal to change the direction now, because it would put them back 
into "idle mode".

> I think that these efforts are very different and that calling them both
> "zope" is very confusing to people.  OTOH, there are related. The first
> builds on the second, which is why, in many ways, "Z" is a good name for
> the second. I'll reiterate that the serach term "Z" is handled well by
> Google.

I think we have recently communicated the differences between Zope 2 and 3 
very well. I think it has become much less confusing than it used to be, when 
we did not communicate that much. I agree with others that a new name will 
harm us much more, since we are starting the communication from scratch.

> Do we also fix WebDAV in Zope 3?

Yes, Michael Kerrin is doing this right now.

> How about TTW scripting? How about  
> process control?  Or all of the other things in Zope 2 that we haven't
> gotten around to yet?  If we aren't going to work on these, don't
> you think we are giving people false expectations for Zope 3's application
> server?

No, I don't think so. We clearly defined our target audience for Zope 3 to be 
the Python developer. We have succeeded there and have communicated this. 
Additionally, non-core projects/packages such as WebDev will address other 
audiences.

> Perhaps, although technical details don't belong in a vision.

I do agree with that, but the reason I want to know technical details is that 
I want to know of how all this is envisioned to work. If Zope 5 means that we 
alienate the pure Zope 3 users or for core-developers like me to relearn Zope 
2, then I have a major issue with that vision and will argue early about this 
direction instead of waiting for something to happen.

> Can you explain the current vision?  Can you explain the current roadmap?
> Do you think we all agree on what it is?

I thought we did. Maybe I was wrong?

Regards,
Stephan
-- 
Stephan Richter
CBU Physics & Chemistry (B.S.) / Tufts Physics (Ph.D. student)
Web2k - Web Software Design, Development and Training