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

[Shane Hathaway]

Ron Bickers wrote:
> Today, I see the mess that a Zope 2 site can turn in to, so I started looking 
> at Zope 3 again.  The release announcements say it's ready for production 
> use, but the website has no promotion of it whatsoever.  You have to dig 
> several levels deep to see any mention that it's not just a new version of 
> Zope.  The downloads page makes it look like nothing more than an upgrade 
> and the one Zope 3 link under Developers says the wiki is for Zope 3 
> development itself, not for those that want to use it.  I do have Richter's 
> book (thank you, Stephan) and Philipp's book is on its way, but I'm having 
> trouble finding any material online that isn't a hodge-podge of years old 
> development notes.

To continue your rant, I think most people expect production-ready 
software to have a large support network around it.  There's certainly 
commercial support for Zope 3, but that doesn't count, because the claim 
  that Zope 3 is production-ready is made in reference to only the open 
source software, not commercial add-ons.  So I think it's misleading to 
call Zope 3 production-ready until we organize better.

I can't help but think the first step to making Zope 3 truly 
production-ready is to put together a pretty web site about Zope 3.  It 
shouldn't make many references to Zope 2.  It should have a "Zero to 
Zope 3 in Ten Minutes" article.  It should have a link to online API 
docs.  Its primary focus should be on attracting new people.

Whoever designs such a site needs good design skills and thick skin.  It 
can't be designed by committee, but the designer should solicit 
feedback.  (Now, I don't have a lot of design skill, but I have noticed 
  that every revision of zope.org has chosen most of its colors from a 
palette of black, white, and blue.  My web log suffers the same malady! 
  I've also noticed recently that most attractive web sites choose two 
fairly saturated colors and balance and vary them.)

> There must be a good reason for this.  I know they didn't spend all this time 
> building a great open source product for members-only.  The only thing I can 
> think of is that perhaps they don't want to promote it while Zope 2 product 
> compatibility isn't there yet.  With so many nice Zope 2 products around, I 
> can see new users getting frustrated that none of them work in Zope 3.  Once 
> some major Zope 2 products work in Zope 3, maybe things will change.

It's probably in ZC's best interest to wait for Zope 2 compatibility 
before promoting Zope 3 heavily, since ZC has a lot of Zope 2 customers. 
  But it's in the Zope community's best interest to promote Zope 3 right 
now, while the competition is heating up.

Shane