Today's Zopefish Piece (was [Zope-CMF] CMF for intranets? )

Jon Edwards jon@pcgs.freeserve.co.uk
Sat, 30 Jun 2001 11:34:17 +0100


I thought David Brown's piece on Zopefish -
http://zopefish.weblogs.com/2001/06/29 - had relevance to the discussion
about how the CMF can compete (specially against MS), so I presumptuously
asked his advice! ;-)

Reply below, forwarded with permission

Thanks David!

> -----Original Message-----
> From: David Brown [mailto:ddb@namshub.org]
> Sent: 30 June 2001 03:25
> To: Jon Edwards
> Subject: Re: Today's Zopefish Piece
>
>
> At 12:28 AM 6/30/2001 +0100, you wrote:
> >Hi David,
> >
> >I enjoyed your piece on Zopefish today.
>
> Thank you very much.
>
> >Would you mind if I pick your brains, and would it be OK to copy
> any advice
> >you might have to the CMF list?
>
> Sure, but I've got to warn you that I don't necessarily have answers or
> good advice.    Opinions I have plenty. :)  SHare them however you
> wish.  I'll just try to not sound like a fool.
>
> >I thought your article had a lot of relevance to this week's
> mini-discussion
> >about how CMF can compete against other major CMS products -
> >http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope-cmf/2001-June/007869.html and
> >http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope-cmf/2001-June/007989.html
> >
> >Given that Microsoft is moving into the CMS field, do you have
> any thoughts
> >as to how Zope-CMF can compete against it (apart from the
> >obviously-important open source benefits)?
>
> Sure.
>
> Make the thing easier to install and configure.  I can make it
> work because
> I like to tinker with things and figure them out.  I work on
> software like
> a lot of people work on their cars.
>
> There's a lot of really hard and painstaking work that needs to happen to
> make something easy to install and configure.  This is one of the areas
> that commercial software has an advantage -- they can make the
> effort worth
> the programmers' while.  If we're lucky, the right people will see what
> needs to be done and do it.  I'm hoping the DC will provide the right
> people.  Maybe ActiveState will pitch in as well -- I've met the
> ActiveState guys.  They are as good as they come.
>
> Find a focus and make it happen.  Right now I see a lot of focus drift in
> the CMF world, and that's because we really are trying to figure out what
> it is we're trying to create.  I saw the same sort of thing happen at
> Microsoft, the difference being that this is happening in the open, and
> it's tougher to manage appearances this way.  People will peek in, play
> with the CMF before it's really ready to be played with by non-tinkerers,
> and leave with a bad impression.
>
> >One bit of good news IMHO, is that the Content-Management market is still
> >fairly young, so no-one "owns" it yet. It's not like we're all going up
> >against Excel!
>
> True.  Content "Management" has not been completely fleshed out yet.  I
> don't know if there's a really good solid definition of what it
> even means yet.
>
> One thing's for sure, though.  Content Creation is *very* well
> established.  Focusing on incorporating the output of existing
> tools, in a
> two-way fashion, is very important.  That's why the Microsoft Word stuff
> that can be done in the CMF is important.
>
> >Our CMF-based project is aimed at a field that is heavily dominated by MS
> >products. NT, Exchange, IIS/ASP and Outlook are installed in
> virtually every
> >Doctor's Practice in the UK, so I have a personal interest in
> this problem
> >as well as an academic one! ;-)
>
> Joel's advice about giving people a way to transfer their data in and out
> safely will go very far for you.  Who's going to bother even
> experimenting
> with your stuff if they cannot use the data they've spent an enormous
> amount of time and money collecting?
>
> dave
>
>