[Zope] Linux Expo & PR & Wired

[Shaw, Howard]

Actually, Paul, it is Mozilla (or rather, Netscape/AOL) who should learn
from you. While not yet fully participating in an open source
development pattern, you meet the prime requirements of a bazaar
project. You have a WORKING!!! product, which anyone can compile and
tinker with to scratch their itch and get IMMEDIATE gratification. You
release often and provide access to code in development. Netscape lost
precious time by releasing a product which was unusable. The primary
driving force for bazaar style hacking is one person finding a
limitation in a working program they are using or planning to use,
correcting it, and eventually returning that change to the group, where
it undergoes a sort of natural selection. 

The concept of a group of programmers intimately familiar with a project
who can be swayed by means of money to scratch someone else's itch
permits non-hackers to participate in the bazaar in a surprisingly
effective fashion, widens the applicable base of the program, and the
pool from which it gains enhancements, as well as lining the pockets of
said group of hackers, to everyone's gain. Since the underlying code is
open-source, no-one is forced or restricted by the actions of these
non-hacker groups in influencing the HFP (Hackers-For-Pay) group,
because any hacker or group of hackers unwilling to accept the changes
of the HFP, can fork the codebase. 

Given the intelligence and wisdom Digital Creations has shown in
focusing on modularity, and the inherent fact that the HFP formulation
involves (generally) paying the HFP to add a given functionality to the
code, without normally specifying implementation details (permitting the
HFP to generate quality code, as is a hacker's wont), and the
willingness they have shown to accept ideas and code from the outside,
it is unlikely in the extreme that anyone in this community will ever
feel the need to fork the codebase.

When Netscape and Mozilla are mentioned on Slashdot and other hacker
media, the reaction is inevitably mixed. When Zope and Digital Creations
are mentioned, in the relatively few fora I have seen them mentioned in,
the reactions fall into three groups. Some have never heard of it, some
use a different product and exhibit territorialism, and some praise. I
have yet to hear a single derogatory term used in connection to Digital
Creations. 

I know that I have regularly used Digital Creations and Zope as an
example, a model, not of how money can be made in open source/free
software, but how it SHOULD be made. You have done an excellent job of
bringing the forces for (not of) software creation on the commercial
side, with the forces for and of software creation on the open side, in
a way that combines the powers and advantages of each, while avoiding
the proprietary viciousness and territorialism generally associated with
commercial software houses. 

With regard to Mozilla, the most interesting thing to note is that an
almost inevitable artifact of the creation of a sufficiently large and
interesting project (as opposed to piece of software) is that it leads
to the creation of other interesting software on the side, in support of
the project. While Mozilla is still not a viable competitor, nor even
qualified on the level of the Cathedral and the Bazaar for a bazaar
project, it has generated several open-source tools for its own
maintenance, such as Bugzilla, which are direct and tangible benefits of
the process, rather than the product. This same pattern is coalescing
about Zope, as witness CoolFaq, in the early stages of inception. The
same pattern is also associated with that most famous of projects, the
Linux kernel, as witness the kernel source browser.

When you open your CVS, you should only provide write access to
individuals who request it. Preferably, write access should be limited
to those (unlike myself, for example) who have contributed patches.
Digital Creations has an excellent reputation in, and relationship with,
the community it has fostered around Zope. It would be a shame if that
reputation and relationship were damaged by some individual taking
advantage of open write access to damage or infect the source. I feel
sure that the Zope community will understand the need and wisdom of
limiting write access to demonstrated contributors.

Howard Clinton Shaw III
St. Thomas High School

> ----------
> From: 	Paul Everitt[SMTP:paul@digicool.com]
> Sent: 	Thursday, May 06, 1999 5:35 AM
> To: 	M.Faassen@vet.uu.nl
> Cc: 	Zope List
> Subject: 	Re: [Zope] Linux Expo & PR & Wired
> 
> 
> Martijn Faassen wrote:
> > At least from a distance in the Netherlands, it seems like you're
> doing
> > a great job anyway, Paul! Digicool *gets* open source. It's not just
> > opening up code; it's opening up the process, and I'm very much
> > impressed by how Digicool is handling this. Feel free to quote me on
> > that (Martijn the open-source pundit ;).
> 
> Actually one of our goals over the rest of the year is to get more to
> "open source *development*" rather than just open source software.  I
> think we have some improvement remaining in "working in the fishbowl",
> as Mozilla puts it.
> 
> Specifically, all our internal artifacts about future work should
> posted
> and discussed more openly.
> 
> Additionally, it would be nice if parts of the CVS tree were writable
> by
> folks outside Digital Creations.
> 
> Hopefully in a month or two we can investigate some things from
> Mozilla
> and learn from it.
> 
> --Paul
> 
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