[ZCommerce] RE: Philip leaves Arsdigita (was: Re: [Zope] kerberos ? + LDAP + ecommerce + ZEO replication etc)

[Tom Jenkins]

Hello Albert,

Albert Langer wrote:
[snip beginning stuff]

 > I also agree that in asking DC to put some resources into it:
 >
 > '...the question that needs to be answered is "How does it immediately
 > help DC to reimplement the ACS ecommerce module inside Zope?"  The 
answer so
 > far hasn't been compelling enough for a project to be created.'
 >
[snip extraneous stuff]
 > How *could* a compelling enough answer to that question for a
 > project to be created be available if nobody from DC has
 > actually studied the recent events to seek an answer?
 >

Why should you *care* if anyone from DC is interested in this.  DC is 
not Zope, Zope is not DC.  Zope is the sum product of a community of 
developers, bug-testers, implementors and advocates.  The company I work 
for has contributed code to Zope, should _we_ be required to come up 
with an ecommerce solution?  While an ecommerce product would be nice, 
don't look to us to write it right now as we don't have any clients who 
are need an ecommerce product.

It may seem like Zope is DC's product, but its not.  The minute they 
announced that Principia (their closed source proprietary product) was 
becoming Zope and its source is open it became my product, Philip's 
product, Ty's product, Steve's product, arguably every Dutchman on the 
planet's product, and yes YOUR product.  With the product came some 
responsibility - if you want it to grow, you need to help make it grow.

Lets look at it another way.  I'm pretty sure I know what you would you 
say if I said "Hey Albert, I would really like to have some monitoring 
stuff built in to zope.  You really should do this for me."

(Note to Paul: I haven't seen your fishbowl proposal for monitoring 
posted on dev.zope.org yet... guess _I'll_ have to write one, sheesh!)

 >
 > All I'm going to do is make suggestions. I'll certainly

Ah, you are a suit.

No I'm sorry that was mean-spirited.  I'll just say that you are 
inexperienced in Open Source development.  I'll give you some advice, 
that statement is insulting to those of us who do contribute our time 
and energy to open source projects.

 > help if there *is* a fishbowl project, but I'm in no
 > position to get one started. I doubt that *anyone* other
 > than DC "stands to gain the most benefit".

Wrong, YOU would gain the most as IT IS YOUR ITCH.  I'm not going 
scratch it for you, I've got mine own thank you very much.

 >
 > Likewise the various people who have been working on
 > various Zope based ecommerce projects would be very
 > likely to help but have shown no likelihood of being
 > able to deliver what is needed to carry it through
 > without some sort of coordinated effort sponsored by
 > DC. You *don't* need to wait to see whether a
 > grassroots effort is the solution. There has been one
 > for more than a year in the zcommerce list and it
 > very obviously is *not* the solution. Has DC gained

Albert, are you intentionally being insulting?  Oh and lets get one 
thing straight, DC is not our babysitter.  Paul Everitt is not our 
father.  Jim Fulton, for whom I have great deal respect and is who I 
want to be when I grow up but I'm afraid of my head exploding <wink>, is 
not our father.


[snip]

 >
 > An entirely separate company has put major resources
 > into an SQL data model that is freely available open source.
 > That saves an awful lot of manpower, just as many
 > companies using Zope have been saved a lot of manpower
 > by the resources DC has put into it.
 >
 > An entirely separate open source community is right
 > now putting major grass roots resources of highly
 > skilled SQL programmers into porting the SQL so
 > that data model can be used with *both* Oracle
 > *and* Postgresql 7.1 and separating it entirely
 > from the Tcl and java - mainly for convenience
 > in doing that - but with the obvious consequence
 > that it will be much easier to move it from the
 > relatively clumsy web application framework
 > they have got, to Zope. That saves an awful lot
 > of manpower too.
 >
 > A third open source community has put major
 > resources into turning postgresql 7.1 into
 > an industrial strength RDBMS quite capable
 > of replacing Oracle in many situations,
 > which is also about to get python as a
 > built in backend procedural language.
 >
 > That's not so much a savings in manpower
 > as something that couldn't be done with
 > any amount of manpower from DC, but is
 > now available to DC.
 >

Hey guess what, its available to YOU too!  Wow, even the zcommerce folks 
whom you so nicely informed us have "shown no likelihood of being able 
to deliver" are available to YOU.  But you have to be willing to 
meaningfully participate in the process.  You obviously have time to 
write, write the fishbowl proposal.

[snip the rest]

The point of this is that the Zope community should not be looking 
solely at DC for Zope enhancements, especially Products.  Yes they have 
a vested interest.  Yes they have skilled Python and Zope people - hell 
two years ago it seemed if you posted more than 10 times a month to the 
Zope list you were mailed an employment offer letter; that's why we kept 
our folks to a maximum of 9 posts <wink>.

And yes this post is late but I had work to do for one of our US Fed 
Govt clients on producing some reports on their Zope box that's hitting 
their PostgreSQL database.  But I double-checked, they still don't need 
an ecommerce product.

-- 
Tom Jenkins
devIS - Development Infostructure
http://www.devis.com