[Zope3-Users] Generations of Zope and Enterprise Culture

[Gary Poster]

On Feb 9, 2006, at 5:20 PM, Edward Pollard wrote:
[...]
> Since I really can't explain the environmental factors in any  
> depth, let me rephrase: How do you sell Zope 3 as a solution?

It depends on the audience.  It also depends on who's talking.  The  
people who do this selling on a regular basis don't often hang out  
here.  Here's an attempt by a developer.

Whoever you talk to, you can talk about the success of Zope 2, the  
CMF, and Plone.

If the audience is people interested in through-the-web programming,  
you steer them to a Zope 2 based solution (at least right now).

If the audience is comprised of experienced programmers, ideally with  
Python experience, and even more ideally with ZODB experience, you  
might mention the years of experience that went into the Zope 3  
redesign.  You might talk about the clean design, the excellent test  
culture, the emphasis on documentation, the better reuse options, and  
the embracing of other Python projects.  You might point out the two  
Zope 3 books available in such a relatively short time after the Zope  
3 release.  If the audience is interested in the ZODB, you talk about  
the ACID compliance, the recent improvements to the conflict handling  
(MVCC), and so on.

If the audience is further comprised of people who work on big sites,  
you talk about the scalability of ZEO, and the open-source front-end  
options.

If the audience is concerned about yet-another-Zope-3-rewrite, you  
first acknowledge their are no guarantees.  Then you can mention that  
Jim Fulton, Zope Pope, has said that he won't write a Zope 4.  You  
can also talk about some of the Zope 2/Zope 3 efforts, which I  
mention below.

Maybe others can offer more.  I'm just moving on to the next  
question. :-)

> And what do you do to overcome the perception that our investment  
> in Zope 2 will have little to no payoff in a Zope 3 developed project?

It's likely that you have four kinds of knowledge from your Zope 2  
investment:

- Python knowledge (good for Zope 3)
- Templating knowledge (good for Zope 3: DTML and ZPT exist)
- ZODB knowledge (good for Zope 3)
- Zope 2/CMF tool knowledge (you'll want to forget a lot of this,  
although concepts like object publishing, tree traversal, object file  
system, and CMF tools carry over in some recognizable ways)

So you're losing part of the fourth category.  The relative  
percentage loss that represents for you is something only you can  
answer.  The return for switching is a clean, powerful, test-driven  
architecture: pretty exciting, to me.

> There are two side issues:
> First, ColdFusion and ASP are the other candidates, so while I  
> don't want to encourage and dwell on specific comparisons, I would  
> be lying if I said they wouldn't come in handy.

I'm afraid my knowledge of these is very out of date.  Python is an  
obvious important differentiator, though perhaps .Net's CLR and the  
upcoming 1.0 release of IronPython might change that story.

> Second, the existence of Zope 3 has completely shot any support for  
> Zope 2 continuation out of the water in our environment. Is this  
> fair, or is there life left to the Zope 2 tree we've developed some  
> experience in? Should I be considering pitching a Zope 2 solution  
> instead?

I don't know: that's a very hard question.

I'll mention a few interesting data points, FWIW.

I think most or all of the big Zope-based companies still make their  
living mostly on Zope 2 code.  Some are moving towards Zope 3 via  
Zope 2/Five, and some are moving their applications piece by piece to  
Zope 3, whole cloth.

Jim Fulton, Zope Pope, works for a company like that, and has voiced  
significant interest in Zope 2 merging with Zope 3.  Many others in  
the community feel that way too.

No easy answers. ;-)

Gary