[ZWeb] me too. so what to do ?

[Jens Vagelpohl]

On 1 Mar 2006, at 22:53, Geoff Davis wrote:

> On Wed, 01 Mar 2006 21:28:38 +0000, Jens Vagelpohl wrote:
>
>> As someone who has done years and years of large-scale sysadmin work,
>> unless the software is supported or has been chosen by the people who
>> will have to deal with it day after day after it has been put in
>> place it simply will not succeed. The current zope.org suffers from
>> that same problem. It became an immediate orphan because those people
>> who were tasked with maintaining the setup on a daily basis *hated*
>> it from Day 1.
>
> I would be truly surprised and disappointed if it were true that those
> responsible for zope.org would put an emotional reaction to a piece of
> code above the needs of the community that helps to sustain them.

I won't be drawn into the same old flame war why it was not well- 
received that has been had again and again. And being polemic doesn't  
help, Geoff. I'm trying to make a point about lack of capable and  
available resources, and a complete disconnect between those  
resources and the package they are directed to support.


> Regardless, if the issue is primarily one of support, perhaps the  
> Plone
> community could help out until a solution that people love comes  
> along?
> For instance, if the Plone Foundation were to come up with  
> resources in
> the community to support a PloneHelpCenter/PloneSoftwareCenter-based
> interim zope.org site, could that be made to happen?  One possible
> division of labor would be to have the existing volunteers be  
> responsible
> for the infrastructure they do not have a problem with (e.g. Zope /  
> Python
> / Squid / LDAP / etc) and backups, and some Plone people could keep  
> the
> Products directory up to date?  At this point I have no idea if  
> this can
> be made to happen on the Plone side, but I would guess that enough  
> people
> would find the prospect sufficiently important that the resources  
> could be
> found.  If the idea is feasible, I would be happy to take the  
> matter up in
> the Plone community.

This isn't as easy as it seems, and simple provisioning of manpower  
is only one small part.

Anyone who wants to actively support zope.org work needs to sign the  
required non-disclosure agreement, see http://www.zope.org/About/  
point 4. Most of that document is outdated, but the legal requirement  
remains. A lot of well-meaning people fall at this hurdle because  
they don't want to sign anything.

The "division of labor" on the cluster is a bit less than conducive  
to decisive action than it might be. One part, the caching, cannot be  
touched because it runs through separate cache servers which are  
shared with Zope Managed Hosting customer cache services.

There is no clear group of "current volunteers" for the software and  
the surrounding network services. A few people have logins (3 or 4  
outside ZC I believe), but no clear delineation of responsibilities  
(X is responsible for Zope, Y manages the LDAP server, etc) exists.

Putting up different software must be accompanied by providing  
suitable integration with existing parts of the site, and possibly at  
least a little bit of migration for important pieces.

The final decision about what is put onto those servers is not just a  
volunteer decision. At least right now ZC must support a decision  
before it can be put into practice.


> If the proposed alternative will be ready for production in the  
> near-term,
> though, this is all a moot point.  Is there a solid timeline on the
> replacement under discussion?

I'm not aware of any timeline.

jens