[Zope2-migration] New mailing list

[Paul Everitt]

I read this quote in a review of Ximian's preview of their Gnome 2 
desktop:

"""
One of the strengths and simultaneously one of the weaknesses of free 
software has been that developers develop what they want to develop, 
not necessarily things that users want.
[snip]
And it is here that companies like Ximian do a tremendous service, 
because they go a long way toward bringing developer products in line 
with market desires.
"""
http://www.linuxandmain.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=316

I think it is applicable to much of the forthcoming discussion on this 
list.

The developers are scratching their itches and doing things that 
interest them.  It doesn't make too much sense to write up feature 
lists and release dates, as it is hard to "govern" itch-scratching.

On the other hand, the small Zope businesses in Zopeland might be 
motivated more by survival in the market place than a killer component 
architecture.  Let's pretend we did a hypothetical survey, asking 
people that deploy Zope, what five things do you want the most?  My 
guess is that 4 of the 5 top vote-getters aren't on being worked on.

But there is still a co-dependency between the two groups: Zope 3 
implementors desperately need people to write applications for Zope 3, 
particularly in advance of the Zope 3 launch.  (Launching with zero 
usable products will be pretty bad.)  Zope 3 implementors also need 
more people participating in implementing, so they need companies to 
support the effort and contribute staff time.

Zope 3 deployers need an architecture that will last at least 3 years, 
and they need it to arrive pretty quickly.

I'm not sure how this symbiotic practice works in practice, though.  
Obviously zope3-dev and #zope3-dev aren't ideal for discussions 
attractive to deployers.  I don't have any good suggestions on how 
deployers can influence implementation, unless they become implementors.

--Paul