[Zope-dev] Zopezen.org is slower! Should time be spent on Plone or ZPT speed?

[Paul Everitt]

On Thursday, Oct 3, 2002, at 07:14 Europe/Paris, Andy McKay wrote:
>
>>    I smell commecial interest here.  I smell people trying to make 
>> that
> one
>> killer project hoping to make it big, instead of centering around the 
>> one
>> vehicle that will help make a bunch of projects big someday.
>
> I won't deny it. I believe I can sell Plone and I'm not sure I can 
> sell Zope
> as easily. Its a simple fact that I have to sell what the clients 
> want: if I
> spend all my time concetrating on Zope innards, I doubt I'll be able 
> to pay
> the mortgage. In the last 3 months 75% of my clients have come to me 
> for
> Plone, in one case I steered them to a solution in Zope because I felt 
> it
> was a more appropriate solution.

I agree with Andy.  Zope is a tool.  Things like Silva and Plone are 
products.  The purpose of Zope is to allow people to build things like 
Silva or Plone, or things quite different (perhaps custom to their own 
needs) quickly.

And frankly, tools don't sell themselves.  People want to see glitz.

You could argue that Zope should be the project/brand with the glitz.  
But you're now limiting people's choices, because you're turning Zope 
into a product rather than a tool.

Back to the X11/KDE argument.  Ever looked at an X11 server running 
w/out a window manager?  That's Zope.  But it's wrong to "fix the 
problem" by eliminating X11 and merging it with KDE, because then the 
Gnome (and windowmaker, and sawfish, and...) people would be unhappy.

Layers provide choice.  Sure, they also provide a bit of confusion, but 
this cost is far outweighed by the benefits.  Especially in open 
source, where people participate because they want to participate, not 
because they have no other choice.

--Paul