[Zope-dev] the Zope Framework project

[Hanno Schlichting]

Martijn Faassen wrote:
> The main innovations in concepts are the name "Zope Framework" to
> distinguish it from the Zope 3 application server and the
> "core"/"extra" concept. These are all hopefully descriptions of what
> are current practices, simply making them more explicit.

>From what I read we do agree on this in general. The terms of what
packages are in the core are not fully fledged out, but this can easily
be done.

> The biggest innovation is the introduction of a Zope Framework
> Steering Group as a new entity that will be the steward for the
> development of this framework. The steering group's primary aim is to
> facilitate developers in the community so that they can continue to
> maintain and develop the framework so that it is useful to all of us.

The introduction of any kind of group equipped with whatever power seems
to be controversial.

I'll try to share a bit of how we approached this issue in the Plone
community.

Before Plone 2.5 we had no organized group of whatever kind and
overloaded the release manager with all concerns. People recognized that
more process distributed over multiple shoulders was required.

What we introduced is our Framework Team. It is in its very inception a
"release team". It is focused on figuring out how to make a next release
of whatever crazy innovations happened in the community and bundle it up
as a consistent story. It serves for one release and is focused on it.
While you get some power of making decisions for the next release, your
powers are limited and have a natural end. You also get some boring and
tedious tasks to do as part of your job. This for naturally avoids to
have people on the team, who just talk but never deliver.

What our framework team does not do, is to care about long term strategy
nor guiding the community at large into one direction. Long term
strategy planning is done on the unorganized basis of some people caring
about it and doing the work required to push things into those
directions. Once those things have stabilized, the framework team can
pick them up and try to get them into the next release.

In order to provide guidance to the community, we have played another
mind trick to let people not feel like they are lead. We have made the
Plone Fondation be relevant, but not interface with the actual
development of the project in any real way. We then elected natural good
leaders into serving as the Foundation Board. As part of their role,
they do not possess any kind of actual power to decide anything in the
development process. They have however been recognized by the community
as leaders and been elected. This official community recognition alone
makes sure they are listened to in the community.

Hanno