[Zope] RE: [ZCommerce] RE: Philip leaves Arsdigita

[R. David Murray]

On Thu, 5 Apr 2001, Walter Ludwick wrote:
> I must confess that this whole business of free software development is new
> to me (less than a year).  I am not a programmer.  I do however employ
[....]
> sharing them) looks to most of us here a bit more like this:  We are all
> busy professionals, and those of us that don't work for DC are over here in
> *your* sandbox, doing our best to contribute substantially to the
> intellectual capital of *your* enterprise (remember, it is DC's stock that
> rises or falls in direct proportion to the installed user-base of Python/
> Zope -- certainly not mine), in the hope that we can enjoy a somewhat beter
> experience as tenants in this commons whose future is under your defacto
> control (i.e. if you say Zope is for Content Managment, and i say it's for
> eCommerce and/or eCommunity, we all know who wins the argument).

The second quote makes it clear the the first quote has significant
consequences to your understanding.  This open source stuff is
counter-intuitive in many ways.  The way I see it is that DC does
not own Zope anymore, and their defacto "control" of it is at the
sufferance of the community.  Anytime they do something enough of
us don't like, we can fork the code.  It is not *DC* saying "Zope
is for Content Management" while you say "Zope is for eCommerce"
that would make your attempt to shift it fail, it is the *community*
saying that.  The community is larger than any single component of
it, *including DC*.  Convince enough of the community that zope is
for eCommerce, and it won't matter what DC says or thinks.

DC's stock price may be affected by the popularity of zope, but if
so it would *only* be because investors would consider that zope's
increacing popularity gives a wider market for DC's *consulting*
services, and that is only valuable as long as DC maintains a high
customer value for their consulting services.  It is exactly the
relative *worthlessness* of any presumed "intellectual property"
that caused DC to go down the route of turning Zope into fully
free/open source software.  And any popularity effect on stock
prices applies equally well to any other company specializing in
zope consulting.  Or using zope as a key strategic technology.

We contribute to Zope because making zope better makes our own
businesses better.  Direct return.  DC has the same motivation, no
more and no less.

--RDM