[Zope] Leave the ivory tower now!

[Gert Thiel]

Dear friends.

A few days ago the Ruby on Rails development team published the 1.0 release.
At that occasion the Zope fans are reminded how far Zope fell far behind in
terms of attention and recognized widespread.

Python has batteries included. Zope is a power plant. But still everyone
speaks of Django, Turbogears or Ruby on Rails. Even if they talk about the
shortcommings of J2EE.

Some of the best content management systems are build using Zope 2. CPS, ZMS
and my favourite: Plone. And Typo3 gets even more attention. Why?

Because we failed. We aren't marketing Zope at all. Have a look at zope.org.
Do you think, that any CEO will stay at that site more than 10 seconds? Have
a look at rubyonrails.org and cry. Zope 3.2 will be delivered soon. Have any
look at zope.org ‹ where isŠ You got it.

To a certain extent Zope 2 was attracting like a nuclear power plant.
Whenever I start programming with Zope 2, latest for Plone, I can feel its
power before even diving into it much, but I'm alarmed of its pitfalls at
the very same time. So all my hopes are with Zope 3 which enabled me without
hurting me yet. Will I get a truly powerful replacement for J2EE?

Here are my ideas to make Zope 3 the most successful framework ever:

Make them love Zope at the very first look:

    * Make installing Zope a double-click or one-command-only experience and
    * offer a 30 minutes tutorial of programming an useful application
      including an audiovisual show for an appetizer that offers a feeling
      of success.

Bribe the managers:

    * Include Microsoft SQL-Server and Oracle relational database access.
    * Include powerful XML processing facilities and
    * include everything necessary and useful to build or use web services.

Enable the beginners:

    * Easy to read and understand ‹ but still complete and current ‹
      documentation is a must.
    * Avoid cluttering everything about Zope across articles, blogs, chats,
      mailing lists and wikis. Keep everything available and searchable at
      one central location.

Remember: The power of Ruby on Rails doesn't come from either Ruby or the
framework but from its community.

And ‹ of course ‹ make Zope 4 even better.

Regards,

  Gert

http://www.gertthiel.de/blog/drafts/ivory-tower/