[Zope] The name ZOPE (was RE: [Zope] Linux.com community ad)

[Tad Murphy]

> As one of the people who had trouble convincing management that "Zope"
> was a serious program, let me also weigh in with an anecdote about the
> worth of the name.  A co-worker told his wife about "Zope" and she
> agreed that the name was stupid.  Then he mentioned the competition:
> "StoryServer", "AOLServer" and "SilverStream".  She said "Zope is the
> best name of the bunch."

Any manager, or anyone for that matter, that makes a decision based on the
name
of a product is a moron.  When I consult companies on what software to use,
I present them with, or tell them to gather, just the facts. Just the
technical information. Then
I have them ask some questions, like:

"Based on the information gathered, which tool is best suited to match our
needs?"

I find it astonishing that people make decisions based on a brand or product
name. But that is why
Microsoft makes so much money based on brand or product name. That's also
why
Cambells, Kraft and Dole (for example) all do so much better than store
brands, even if
the store brands offer more vitamins and minerals per serving. Just a stupid
comparison, but
you get the idea. By the way, I purchase store brands. ;-)


> The name is easier to distinguish for Americans, I think, who pronounce
> the letter "Z" differently from the character "S". I'm pretty sure Brits
> don't do this, but I could be wrong. Nevertheless, the verbal
> resemblance between "Zope" and "soap" is still pretty high.

This is such a lame argument. No matter how you pronounce Zope the fact
remains it is still _spelled_ Z-O-P-E.

> It is rather odd that php4 is now Zend.

PHP4 uses Zend as the scripting engine. Zend can be used by any application
server as it's scripting engine, but it started out as a rewrite of the PHP3
scripting engine. Zend has been around for quite some time and is named Zend
for it's authors, ZEev Suraski and aNDi Gutmans. I don't think they chose
that name to compete with Zope.

Besides, if we want to compare apples to apples it would like this. PHP3/4
is an application server and would compare to Zope, an application server.
Zend is a scripting engine and would compare to Python, a scripting engine.
Zend will never compete with Zope.


| SOAP would be the only thing to really confuse it with. Haven't heard much
| talk about SOAP interacting with XML-RPC in Zope, or how Zope might
| implement SOAP later. This confusion should generally help Zope, though,
not
| hurt it.

And my opinion on SOAP is simply Microsoft trying to reinvent the wheel. I
read the specs and it looks an awful like XML-RPC or WDDX... not sure why
you would want to use it...

Tad Murphy
"cybertad"
http://www.zope.org/Members/cybertad/