[Zope] Help! The suits are taking away my Zope! - THANKS

[sean.upton@uniontrib.com]

Regarding WebDAV, a completely wild suggestion: why not try davfs on a Linux
box running Samba as a SMB->DAV proxy?  Then just mount the SMB share of
your Zope root as a drive letter or create a shortcut to the share folder on
everyone's desktops...  You could find an old PC, throw Linux on it, and use
it in this manner?

I haven't done this, but the idea seems like an interesting, free, and
likely possible solution, at least for something as simple as getting
documents into Outlook, etc.

Sean

-----Original Message-----
From: Dunigan, Craig [mailto:craig.dunigan@esker.com]
Sent: Wednesday, February 27, 2002 12:00 PM
To: 'seb bacon'
Cc: 'zope@zope.org'
Subject: RE: [Zope] Help! The suits are taking away my Zope! - THANKS


I replied to seb, because his message summarizes the suggestions I've
received.  Thanks to all who responded, even if it was only commiseration.
I'm looking at webdrive, but we have 500+ plus PCs in nine locations
encompassing six countries and three US states, so I'm not sure that's
really gonna fly....  Yes, seb, I did search the archives first, but your
response prompted me to try again, and I have discovered that Zope 2.4+
includes a workaround for some of the M$-DAV problems.  No one apparently
noticed that I said I was still on Zope 2.3.  I've done some preliminary
tests with Zope 2.5 that are successful with Office 2K so far.  It won't
solve the Outlook problem, but I haven't seen any evidence yet that even
SharePoint can do that, so I may be safe there.  I do believe that DC or
someone else should look at adding SMB to Zope.  M$, especially Office, is
the standard in the corporate world, and as long as someone with an
impressive title but little technical knowledge can claim that Zope doesn't
work with some facet of Office, no matter how obscure, they'll have an
excuse to remove or refuse Zope.  

For anyone else reading and wondering about a solution - it looks like
WebDrive and Zope 2.5 are the best ideas I've been given so far.  However,
it may still come down to some very good advice from Ron, who didn't copy
the list on his response, but who I will quote here (with his permission):


>Having been down the route you now find yourself, I can only give you this
>advice:  Take benchmarks of current performance levels and record them
somewhere
>where you won't forget about it.  Record how much the Linux/Zope software
is
>costing your company (THAT should be easy to calculate:)).  Then, give in
to the
>Beast of Redmond and switch over everything to M$.  
>
>Yes, I am as die-hard Linux fan as you certainly are, however you are
competing
>not against your company management, but against Microsoft.  Your
battlefield is
>not computer science or technology but marketing.  On that battlefield,
your
>weapons are useless.  Your company would make a mistake by switching over
to
>MS.  You know that, and I know that, but your management doesn't know that
and
>there really isn't anything that you can do about it.  
>
>What you can do is save your job, bite your tongue, and do the switch.
Just
>keep track of how much it costs your company and the reduction in
performance. 
>Then you can pull out the Linux/Zope data and you will have an "I told you
so"
>when things (inevitably) go wrong.  

<small snip>

>Sorry that I couldn't be of more help, but your problems are due to a
failure of
>management, not technological.  No amount of coaching from this list will
cure
>that.

>Ron


<sigh>  Well put, Ron.  The core of the problem is marketing brainwashing,
which isn't my area.  Well, I can at least fight it until they tell me I
have no other choice.

Sorry for cluttering the list with my long, sad tale.  Thanks again to all.

Craig

> -----Original Message-----
> From: seb bacon [mailto:seb@jamkit.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, February 27, 2002 4:01 AM
> To: Dunigan, Craig
> Cc: 'zope@zope.org'
> Subject: Re: [Zope] Help! The suits are taking away my Zope!
> 
> 
> Craig,
> 
> I don't have any direct suggestions to help, other than a conviction
> that what you want *can* be done.  I *think* it is possible to hack
> around the m$ webdav deficiencies; others may be able to help more on
> this topic.  Have you searched the list archives?  I think ChrisW and
> Andreas and Shane have all talked aobut this before.
> 
> On the point about drive letters: one solution is to use 
> webdrive, about
> which I've heard good things:
> 
> http://www.webdrive.com
> 
> good luck.  I hope you don't have to struggle with sharepoint :-(
> 
> seb
> 

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