So what will we do? (was [Zope] What causes the community to stall so often?)

[Ron Arts]

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Ok,

my take on comparing Zope with other OSS projects..

If you look back in time, to the beginning of MySQL, PHP and Apache, what
made those products so succesfull?

MySQL started from a company (like Zope Corp), PHP from an individual
(Rasmus Lehrdorf) and Apache from a bunch of unix sysadmins.

All these products:

- filled a real *need*
- had little competition
- were well-documented with *lots* of examples to get you started.
- and the programmers listened to their users *and* sysadmins.

PHP:    there was no general purpose serverside scripting language, also
         it looked a lot like 'C' and so appealed to the unix crowd out there.
MySQL:  the need for a fast database to be used from PHP. The only competitors
         at that time were mSQL (crippled) and Postgres95 (slow and buggy).
Apache: because NCSA was hardly maintained any more, apache was basically
         the only one in the market, and it was good!

At that time RPM was not there and many other OSS programs did not use
"./configure; make; make install". But these did. Those days this was
sensible advanced system management, so it appealed to admins.
Also there was documentation with lots of examples, so it appealed to
programmers.

Because of the needs, functionality and easy learning curve these projects
picked up a lot of steam quickly. This generated a large community, lots
of feedback, and because the builders kept listening and keeping up
these projects became the best in the OSS world.

Enter Zope. Zope really has potential to become one of the best website platforms
in OSS world, and I am very enthusiastic about it. It has little competition
and fills a real need. My personal opinion is that Zope is not taking off
as it should because of three things:

- documentation without lots of examples. I know, there is the Zope Book, but
   take away the screen dumps, and look again.
- not keeping up with good sysadmin practices (RPM)
- not enough listening to users (sysadmins + programmers)

I think Derek's remarks are pretty well on the spot. If Zope Corp wants
Zope to take off just like MySQL AB did with MySQL here is my advice:
work along the same principles: documentation (examples plus reference),
easy installation, lay down a clear path, and listen to your users.

The community can contribute (and they will), but the actual programmers
need to be heavily involved.

BTW:
Don't think Zope does not do anything right, certainly not. The product
itself looks very good, stable, very functional. New version announcements
to freshmeat and other places are *very important*. Keep them coming.


Ron Arts

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