[Zope-dev] Re: Killer App for ZClasses

[Martin Aspeli]

Christopher Lozinski wrote:

> I thought, hey, I bet a million people need such a simple web app.  Let 
> us make it really easy to implement craigslist or better.  Let me go 
> ahead and create a ZClass product, and go ahead and distribute it.  Lots 
> of people would use it.   Or at least enough to build up a critical 
> mass.  And then as some of those people go ahead and stretch the 
> boundaries of the app, they will fix all of the ZClass problems we all 
> know about.  They will fix them for their own reasons, which is of 
> course what drives open source.
> 
> What do you think?  Is this an effective way to operate on the social 
> medium which is open source?

Of course you can do this, no-one will stop you, but if you listen to 
the voices here who've been around for longer than you have, you may do 
well to heed their advice and avoid the risk that you'll be wasting your 
time.

The single biggest flaw in people's perception of open source is 
normally the assumption that users and developers will flock to anything 
that's being offered up. I'm sure there are existing tools that already 
do what you describe, that've been tested and thought about by lots of 
people. I'm also not so sure it's going to be a "killer app" in the same 
way that Plone arguably is for Zope 2, for example.

I've never used ZClasses, they were dead before I joined the world of 
Zope. No-one I know uses ZClasses. Those who tell me they once did are 
very happy to be using other things. :)

Perhaps you should look at some of the technologies the Zope community 
has invented to supersede them? Grok may be exactly what you want; take 
a look at the tutorial on http://grok.zope.org.

If you want to put your time in and help the community (great!) then 
helping to advance the cause of Grok and Zope 3 will probably be a much 
better investment.

Martin