[Zope-Annce] Local File System product broken in Zope 2.5.0

[Jonothan Farr]

I just wanted to make several announcements about the Local File System product for Zope. 

One is that I am a bad, bad open source project manager. This email is the first thing I've done to help this project along in well over 2 years, despite its obvious usefulness to so many people. The problem is that it was never useful enough for me, so I've never actually used it for anything.

The other is that I want to thank Zope Corporation for their continuing commitment to backward compatibility with products written for older version of Zope. I have steadily watched the decline of the LocalFS product over the years as I have failed to keep up with the changes needed to keep my product working with Zope. Usually the community has found workarounds on their own. I probably have 20 different copies of the same patch to get LocalFS working in Zope 2.4. 

Now I'm getting reports that LocalFS is broken in Zope 2.5. Surprise, surprise. I don't know if it's the same problem or not. If it is, you're in luck, because there are plenty of patches floating around out there. ;) Maybe there've been just a few changes to the Zope core and I'm blowing this out of proportion. I haven't been paying enough attention to know. I'm sure it's also annoying that the look and feel of the management screens for LocalFS is nothing at all like the rest of Zope anymore, though.

I keep hoping that someone who actually uses the product might step up and take over organizing it. I set up a SourceForge project for it toward that purpose, in fact. I stopped just short of actually importing the code into their cvs repository. Maybe if some volunteers stepped forward to at least patch the thing up until it works then I might be more motivated. If there's anything I've learned from open source, it's that work tends to get done by the people who want it done the most. I have a hard time motivating myself to maintain a product I don't even use.

This has just been a friendly little rant. Please, don't anyone take it too personally. I am quite frustrated with Zope for its instability as a platform, make no mistake about that. But before your hackles get all in a rise, I'll say I understand why it has to be that way and it's probably for the best. It's just frustrating, that's all.

Asalaam Alaykum,
--jfarr