[Zope-dev] Fishbowl not problem centered enough

Casey Duncan cduncan@kaivo.com
Wed, 20 Jun 2001 09:24:40 -0600


"Jay, Dylan" wrote:
> 
> Fishbowl is a great idea but it seems to be that its solution focused rather
> than problem focus. Perhaps if you had a page that listed all the problems
> with zope or problems that need to be solved that isn't as easy as it could
> be with zope. 

The fishbowl is also "pull" technology, and so it is time-consuming to
keep up with the developments. I personally find it to be cumbersome,
limiting and not really conducive to actually getting stuff done.

The collector currently fulfills the role of a bug list, and to some
degree a feature request bin. However, I (and others) find using it for
the latter is often a waste of time.

> Problems could then be organized according to priority due to
> severity or strategy, or even voting via the comunity (ala Java bug parade
> developer.java.sun.com/developer/bugParade/)
> Then under each problem could be listed the proposals that form solutions to
> the problem. Of course some solutions may solve many problems and therefore
> appear more than once.

I agree that a community-centered bug/feature request collector would be
beneficial. One that does not rely exclusively on DC's resources. DC
just does not have the bandwidth to deal with everyone's needs. 

I know there has been talk of opening up the Zope CVS to outside
contributions, I personally think this is long overdue. In order for a
community development forum to really work, this would have to happen.

> 
> I just see lots of solutions many of which attack some of the same problems
> and no clear way to get those people comunicating and making informed
> trade-offs
> 

This is one of the challenges of open-source development. I think we as
a community need to leverage our own technology more to facilitate its
further development. And I think that means relying on DC less and
therefore decentralizing things more.

I know that the folks at DC are thinking seriously about these issues. I
would say that unless something is actually done soon about opening the
Zope core to outside contributors, they run the serious risk of someone
just forking the code to do it for them. I also think that Zope.org
itself could greatly benefit from direct outside contribution.

> ----
> Dylan Jay                           mailto:djay@avaya.com
> Avaya Communication                 Tel:   +61 2 9886-8961
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-- 
| Casey Duncan
| Kaivo, Inc.
| cduncan@kaivo.com
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