[Zope3-Users] Re: Visionaire! (All your problems, solved)

[Martin Aspeli]

On Fri, 03 Mar 2006 09:10:56 -0000, Max M  
<maxm at mxm.dk> wrote:

> Jeff Shell wrote:
>
>> Yes it does. And I hate it. At Bottlerocket, we're a very small
>> company. We look at Plone and go "alright, how do we make it do less?
>> how do we turn this thing off, and this thing off, and this thing off,
>> and this thing off? why is it so slow? and it still doesn't do the
>> page we need to do. Let's just write our own CMS".
>>
> *
> Apparently many people disagree with you.
>
> Google hits:
> **27,700,000* for **Plone****
> ***23,600,000* for **Zope**
> *14,800,000* for **Zope -Plone**

I'll note a few observations about why Plone is popular:

  - it's driven by the UI ...
  - ... so people who see it are drawn to it: "this is pretty, I'd like to  
use it for something"...
  - ... those people end up on mailing lists and chatrooms...
  - ... where they are generally well-received, cared for and nurtured...
  - ... and they end up at a sprint or conference....
  - ... where they meet a whole bunch of really cool people that they  
identify with...
  - ... and they contribute documentation, start writing products, and  
start helping out in other ways...
  - ... not at least because the Plone community strives to make that as  
easy and rewarding for them as possible

  - it's driven by a business model ...
  - ... so the people who contribute also make their living on it as Max  
does...
  - ... so they all carefully market and evangelise about it....
  - ... and ofen try to factor things they've written for customers down  
into the core...
  - ... and take every user very seriously, making those users feel  
welcome, back to the point above

  - it's driven by end-user features that have business value...
  - ... so those features tend to be well-integrated and mulled over by  
people with real users making real money off their development...
  - ... and are chosen not to dilute the brand

  - it's a product, not a framework - it's easier to sell a product than a  
framework to a real user...
  - ... although it has grown rather too much framework of its own,  
partially because of bad decisions, partially because of inertia and  
politics lower down the stack, partially because it seemed like a good  
idea at the time but as the world evolves, certain solutions have become  
less ideal

Martin

-- 
(muted)