[Zope3-Users] Please Guido, pick me, pick me!

[Gary Poster]

This is an interesting thread.  Some opinions and observations:

Guido will do what Guido does.  His seeming antagonism to Zope is a  
little annoying, but he's opinionated on other topics too, and  
sometimes admits to being wrong and human.  As some folks mentioned,  
it does sound like he maybe wants something simpler and more  
constrained in scope than Zope 3.  Maybe Jim's Bobo would be it, or  
maybe someone else will be able to assemble some Zope 3 bits into a  
small approachable kit.

I am hopeful that Zope 3 will continue strong whether it has huge  
buzz or not, as Stephan, Kevin, Joel and maybe others said.

However, I agree with Joel, Martin, and others that buzz and  
community would undeniably be helpful.  I can even conceive of it  
being absolutely essential: sadly, trusting on merit alone is a scary  
and probably naive road.  I truly wish we could get the word out  
about Zope 3.

The Zope development companies (such as ZC) are probably only a  
limited resource: they are making money on Zope, sometimes without  
their clients knowing or caring that Zope is the tool behind the  
software.  The companies are already often contributing significantly  
to the development of Zope 3 and/or of an open- or mixed-source  
platform, and simply don't have too many other further resources to  
give.  I appreciated what Martin said:
> [...]
> Note that I'm not saying that the same people who produce the code  
> (and great code it is, which is why I care so much about this)  
> should be doing this. In fact, the Plone experience tells us they  
> probably shouldn't. But *someone* ought to[...]

The Zope Foundation, which is probably coming pretty darn soon, might  
help catalyze contributors a bit.  It will own the zope3.org domain,  
the zope.org domain, and probably lots more, and all of the software.

But before or after the foundation, I think small steps are more  
likely to succeed than grand plans.  Someone writing an impressive  
brochure-ware site about Zope 3 is going to be easier and more  
impressive than trying to get folks to agree on a grand Zope 3  
software site.  Someone assembling some of the word-smithing in this  
thread might even generate a simple impressive advocacy *page* that  
could be linked to from the front of zope.org.  I thought Joel's post  
had some ring to it, for instance.  Whether or not we have a "Zope 3:  
Rebel Angel" rename :-), it would be great to see Joel or Martin or  
someone step up to put some advocacy out there.  If I can help with  
trying to figure out who to ask for what, let me know.

Again, ZC is *giving the zope.org site away to the new Zope  
Foundation*: it will be up to community members and corporate members  
together to make the site the compelling sales pitch and welcoming  
documentation that it could be.

Just make *small* steps. :-)

Gary