[Zope] Re: Phil Greenspun on ACS and ZOPE

[Jerry Spicklemire]

Hi Zope fans,

Just to let everyone know, below is a copy of a message I sent to Phil
Greenspun, about some errors in his document. Hopefully he won't get
swamped with duplicates.

Later,
Jerry S.


There are many examples of the Zope team leveraging pre-built tools, and
two examples you mention to the contrary (below) are in fact erroneous.

"For example, they built their own Web server (ZServer); we used AOLserver..."

	ZServer is Sam Rushing's "Medusa"

	http://www.nightmare.com/medusa/index.html



"Zope built their own database management system; we used Oracle out of the
box..." 

	Zope uses Aaron Watters' "Gadfly"

	http://www.chordate.com/gadfly.html


Also:

"Compare http://www.arsdigita.com/pages/toolkit/modules.html to what you
find at www.zope.org and you'll see the practical difference in terms of
pre-built modules."

	Maybe you didn't notice:

	http://www.zope.org/Products




Personally, I think you should include a link that points to your own
assessment of PostgreSQL* (
http://photo.net/wtr/aolserver/introduction-2.html ) instead of "force
feeding" Oracle, especially after espousing Open Source, and then rejecting
your own advice. It would appear to be a more balanced view, even if you
believe the effort outweighs the cost difference. Care and feeding of
Oracle is FAR from effortless!

Later,
Jerry S.

* "The open-source purist's only realistic choice for an RDBMS is
PostgreSQL, available from www.postgresql.org. In some ways, PostgreSQL has
more advanced features than any commercial RDBMS. Most important, the
loosely organized unpaid developers of PostgreSQL were able to convert to
an Oracle-style multi-version concurrency system (see below), leaving all
the rest of the commercial competition deadlocked in the dust."