[Zope] Zope magazine - The spirit of the community

[Tim Böckers]

<snip>
> First off, kudos to Beehive for stepping up to develop this idea.  Yes - it
> fits a need.
> But, Beehive's decision to charge for their contribution to the community
> seems more predatory or parasitic.
> I would rather see Beehive take ZC's posture of collaborating with the
> community in the spirit of open source development.
>
</snip> and
<snip>
>
> Is Beehive doing this because the community hasn't kept up with the news
> items on zope.org?
</snip>

If I'd like to be cynical now I'd ask everyone to move on and have a go at 
O'Reilly too, for selling books on open-source technologies and thus being 
plain parasites.
However, since I don't want to be- When I started using Zope my main problem 
was the documentation and the potential of Zope. Coping with a new technology 
that offers me a vast array of languages to use can be pretty heavy. The 
community was of help back then, with the mailing list archives, the how-to's 
etc. Still, I remember these days with horror, spending half a day going 
through tons of messages in the archive in order to find the info I needed.
Now, if somebody is willing to edit the content that is in the archives, 
prepare it in a clear fashion, add their own knowledge to it I see this as an 
excellent effort. If this person then wants to charge me for the work they 
have done, fair-enough, as it will save me a hell of a lot of time and 
trouble.
I think that it is unfair to blame Beehive for breaking with the community. 
Much more, I feel that they are trying to offer a valueable service to the 
users, and as it was mentioned by Mark Pratt in one of his mails, they are 
considering giving back to the community by making their archives accessible.
Bottomline: If you are savvy enough to make it by yourself and with a bit of 
help from the community fine. If you don't have the cash to pay for the mag, 
you have the community. If you do have the cash and pay for the mag, surely 
you will have an easier way up on your learning curve and will be able to 
give it back to the community. 

Tim