[Zope] MarketPlace for Zope Software Components

[lozinski@jobmart.com]

First my thanks to Douwe Osinga <dmo@oberon.nl>
for clearly expressing the position in favor of open source
software.

>I would never buy components without the source code. In my >experience support
for commercial components is rather >irregular and not being able to debug or
even
>fix problems in components you use can really damage your >product. Sending
back the fixes is no more then logical, so >everybody profits. Having the source
and sharing patches means >that you're already pretty close to full open source.

I agree with what he has to say.  If I were a hard core software developer, I
would prefer open source software, I can download it for free, get it to work,
make any changes I need, and get support on a mailing list if I have a serious
problem.
In fact I would object to not having modifiable source code.

But there is also another way to look at this problem.  I believe that there is
another target market that might prefer commercially supported components.
Which could also include source.  I am thinking of an end user market.  More
like an excel user than an object-oriented developer.  These people would like
to have an environment where they can drag and drop different components, and
click on a few values to configure them.  These end users want a clear catalogue
of components, with a more detailed description of what each component does.
They would like the components preinstalled on a server, they just select which
ones they want to use.  And they would need to pay for these components in order
to support the marketting of these components, marketting investment which zope
could benefit from.

I have seen lots of object-oriented environments, and I believe that zope is the
first technology that really enables a market in software components.  I think
that there is a real opportunity here.

Are there any commercially sold software components for zope?
Is anyone intersted in buying commercially supported zope components?

Actually I am looking for a zope component to run the python and zope webring.
Which is what started my thinking on these matters.


Regards
Chris

1-510-795-6086
lozinski@openstepnews.com
lozinski@jobmart.com