[ZCommerce] RE: Philip leaves Arsdigita (was: Re: [Zope] kerberos ? + LDAP + ecommerce + ZEO replication etc)

[Paul Everitt]

OK, time to put on the boots and wade into the swamp with my "mealy
mouthed response". :^)

Albert Langer wrote:
> 
> I agree with your suggestion that ecommerce based on OpenACS4
> should be "fishbowled" and will even count that as
> expressing "interest".
> 
> However after nearly a year, and at this particular moment, it
> is nowhere near *enough* interest because of events that have
> just happened and are happening right now.

There's lots of events happening now, not just with ArsDigita.  A few
months ago RedHat  bought Akopia and now have an Open Source e-commerce
system backed by a company with an arguably larger market cap.

They're both good choices, IMO.  I'm particularly intrigued by
ArsDigita, notwithstanding the baseball bat you're using to beat DC in
the head.

> I also agree that in asking DC to put some resources into it:
> 
> '...the question that needs to be answered is "How does it immediately
> help DC to reimplement the ACS ecommerce module inside Zope?"  The answer so
> far hasn't been compelling enough for a project to be created.'
> 
> and that:
> 
> 'DC has limited resources, and making a committment to port the
> ACS ecommerce module can't possibly be done without being able to see a
> tangible monetary benefit to DC as a company.'
> 
> How *could* a compelling enough answer to that question for a
> project to be created be available if nobody from DC has
> actually studied the recent events to seek an answer?

Do you have evidence that nobody from DC has been paying attention?  I
don't believe in clairvoyance, so don't use that as proof.  I've been
watching ArsDigita, ACS, and OpenACS.  There's seems to be a LOT of
tumult going on there.  Open Source developers in particular seem jaded
by the events.

Shouldn't that factor into your opinion?  Nahh, everything seems pretty
clear to you.

> So who is to answer that question? A grassroots community effort?
> Why should we, if it so happens that we merely wish DC well and are
> very appreciative of DC having made possible the benefits of Zope
> for the things we *are* interested in, but do *not* have a focus
> on tangible monetary benefit to DC as a company?

You argue that this is (a) completely obvious, (b) incredibly important,
and (c) pretty easy.  The beauty of Open Source is that people can
scratch their own itch, and you seem like you have a lot of scratching
you'd like to see done.

I'll confess, I'm viewing this thread through the lens of hearing "I've
got a great idea for someone else to do."  It's hard to separate the
attitude from the merit of the idea.  The idea has merit, that's
certainly true.

> The only way *that* question can be answered is by DC staffers
> being assigned to take a look and answer it. It can't be answered
> by me having said that I've taken a very close look and concluded
> that DC would have the most to gain from getting it done quickly.
> Nor can it be answered by you off the top of your head.

It may or may not come as a surprise to you, but we get a LOT of emails
from people convinced that their idea is the one, single thing that DC
should work on to make Zope wildly successful.

They're all good ideas.  Some are great ideas.  But we could barely
afford to do any one of them.  We can't possibly be expected to do all
of them.  We can't even be expected to be ringleader for all of them.

That doesn't mean that starting a relationship with OpenACS isn't
something that shouldn't beat out the other 50 killer ideas that we
should pay attention to.  However, you'd do your argument a favor if you
modulated the tone a little bit.

> It can only be answered by someone from DC taking the time (I
> believe your estimate of a week, made nearly a year ago is
> reasonable), to checkout what's been happening with arsDigita
> and OpenACS very recently and thoroughly review both
> the ACS4 documentation and code and what interest DC might
> have in a solid turnkey ecommerce package and an escape route
> from Oracle in it's commercial contracts.

Agreed.  It would be awfully handy to have what you describe, *if* it
was a good fit.

> It certainly can't be answered by waiting to see if someone
> *else* stands to gain enough from this job being done to
> take up the mantle of actually carrying it through.

I disagree.  There are a number of very interesting projects in Zopeland
that aren't waiting on some kind of papal blessing from DC.

For instance, a suggestion I hear a LOT more often than "When are you
going to integrate with ACS?" is "When are you going to integrate with
Java?"  Phil Harris (I believe) went ahead and downloaded the
SourceForge project for embedding Java in Python, then decided to see
what happened if he ran it in Zope.  He never contacted us and asked for
permission.

I understand your point that the zcommerce mailing list shows that a
year has passed and not enough progress has been made.  And yes, if
Digital Creations would have participated, it might have turned out
better.

But one thing I've learned over many years in the Python community is
that people that make a case persuasively, in a way that makes people
want to work with them, and are willing to get off the sidelines and
participate, generally produce something successful.  Mark Hammond
didn't wait for Guido to bless Win32 and COM.  He certainly didn't
belittle and berate Guido until Guido capitulated.  He *did* it.

> All I'm going to do is make suggestions. I'll certainly
> help if there *is* a fishbowl project, but I'm in no
> position to get one started. I doubt that *anyone* other
> than DC "stands to gain the most benefit".

A suggestion: if *you're* not willing to lead your own crusade...well,
this thought concludes itself.

You seem to have deep knowledge of OpenACS (we don't).  It seems that
you have a crystal clear knowledge of how easy it would be to integrate
Zope and Open ACS (we don't have such knowledge).  You're convinced that
our customers want PostgreSQL more than Oracle (we aren't).

Aren't *you* the right person to lead this effort?

> Likewise the various people who have been working on
> various Zope based ecommerce projects would be very
> likely to help but have shown no likelihood of being
> able to deliver what is needed to carry it through
> without some sort of coordinated effort sponsored by

Why is that?  You consider OpenACS to be a good model.  Is there some
big company behind it?

Your logic doesn't follow.

> DC. You *don't* need to wait to see whether a
> grassroots effort is the solution. There has been one
> for more than a year in the zcommerce list and it
> very obviously is *not* the solution. Has DC gained
> any "tangible monetary benefit" from that at all?

I just scanned the zcommerce mailing list.  Prior to this thread, you
posted one message in the last nine months.  This begs the question:
what did *you* do to help zcommerce?

It's legitimate to slam DC for not participating -- e-commerce is a
mandatory item and it's painful that Zope doesn't have a prominent
story.  But geez, you're not doing anything either.  You simply want us
to do everything, but what are *you* going to do?

> vvvvv
> > What more could a Zope guru want to persuade them to take a
> > look at the possibility of demonstrating how
> > much better that fits with Zope than with java or Tcl?
> 
> Manpower.  ;-)
> ^^^^^
> 
> Well manpower is one of the major benefits you could get
> from taking that look.

Perhaps.  Perhaps not.  Perhaps it could simply be DC doing all the
work.  Tell me, would *you* participate in the coding of the integration
if we took a look?  If so, are you interested in doing so *prior* to us
taking a look, and confirming that this is a great, easy idea?

> You've already got grassroots efforts doing "presentation"
> of ecommerce with Zope and there's no big problem doing
> the catalog side using ZODB (though an ORDBMS has
> advantages there too).
> 
> But your core competency does not lie in ORDBMS SQL and
> neither does that of the grassroots Zope community.
> (Nor in the simpler matter of protocols communicating
> with payments gateways for that matter - wampum is
> still "pre-alpha" and there is nothing for any
> service except cybercash - which is in deep trouble).

Agreed.

> An entirely separate company has put major resources
> into an SQL data model that is freely available open source.
> That saves an awful lot of manpower, just as many
> companies using Zope have been saved a lot of manpower
> by the resources DC has put into it.

Agreed.  But conversely, if it was so simple, you could have done it in
the time it took you to type up these emails.

> An entirely separate open source community is right
> now putting major grass roots resources of highly
> skilled SQL programmers into porting the SQL so
> that data model can be used with *both* Oracle
> *and* Postgresql 7.1 and separating it entirely
> from the Tcl and java - mainly for convenience
> in doing that - but with the obvious consequence
> that it will be much easier to move it from the
> relatively clumsy web application framework
> they have got, to Zope. That saves an awful lot
> of manpower too.

Uhh, are you suggesting that OpenACS would switch web application
frameworks?  From what I've seen of the OpenACS folks, they're not that
keen on Zope, if my memory serves me.  Do you have some evidence that
OpenACS is interested in joining with Zope?

> A third open source community has put major
> resources into turning postgresql 7.1 into
> an industrial strength RDBMS quite capable
> of replacing Oracle in many situations,
> which is also about to get python as a
> built in backend procedural language.

I hadn't heard that Python was going to be a stored procedure language
for PostgreSQL.  Can you send me a link?

> That's not so much a savings in manpower
> as something that couldn't be done with
> any amount of manpower from DC, but is
> now available to DC.

Just curious...how much manpower are you estimating that it would take
to do this integration?  And have you ever done an integration project
like this in the past?

> Now DC seems to have had to put quite
> a bit of resources into maintaining an
> Oracle adaptor for python, which I suspect
> is not entirely within your core competency.

That's true, but many of our consulting customers demand Oracle.  And in
fact, some of them have funded the development of DCOracle.  Obviously,
when someone funds us for other databases (as was the case with Sybase),
we'll be interested in that as well.

In fact, I don't believe we've had a single consulting customer that
deployed atop PostgreSQL.  You could certainly argue that, since we
don't do it, it naturally turned out that way.

Point being, this is more nuanced than you've portrayed it.

> I would guess that there would be
> at least *some* contracts that DC depends
> on for revenue where the customer spends
> at least as much on Oracle licenses as
> they do on consulting, so you ought to be able

Wow, this is pretty condescending.

> to figure out that there exists at least
> a possibility worth investigating that
> being able to demonstrate that what they
> want works with Zope *both* on Oracle
> and on a free ORDBMS could result in
> some tangible monetary benefit to DC
> (even if they only have to buy
> *less* Oracle licenses with Zope/ZEO
> acting as an intermediary between
> postgresql backed web servers and
> Oracle stuff working with internal
> systems).

I'm not sure how much consulting you've done, but from what I've seen,
people don't change database infrastructures because there's a new one
that's free.  Perhaps *new* customers will choose the free one, but
that's a long-haul proposition.

If you haven't, then read "Crossing the Chasm".  Your arguments appeal
to the early market, but scare the hell out of the mainstream market. 
It takes time for new things like Python, Zope, the ZODB, and PostgreSQL
to penetrate the mainstream.

Besides, you've lost me here.  Is the goal to gain e-commerce (whether
from OpenACS, RedHat Interchange, or some other solution), or is the
goal to sell PostgreSQL to our consulting customers?

> I would also guess that there would
> be at least *some* contracts that
> DC has *not* gained because the
> reason the customer wants the
> sort of things Zope does provide
> is closely connected with also
> wanting to charge for various
> goods and services that go with
> it and they decide they would
> prefer to deal with consultants
> that have a better track record
> on ecommerce.

Yes, you are correct.

> I'm just guessing of course. Only
> DC can determine whether these,
> and/or other matters might
> result in tangible monetary
> benefit to DC.

Yes, it would be a tangible monetary benefit.  One that might likely
offset the time invested.  Just like a long list of things that DC could
do.

But we're not a huge company.  We've done the Open Source route hoping
that folks like you, with a deep passion about a topic, will leverage
the work we're doing for free and add to it.

> But the direct benefit to DC that I
> highlighted was the benefit that
> is also a direct benefit to the
> whole Zope community that I am
> more interested in.

Obviously we're interested in the Zope community as well.

> The more widely Zope is known
> and used the stronger it grows
> and the more consulting revenue
> DC gets, since people who can
> afford to pay for consultants
> are quite happy to do so, but
> like to have heard that what
> they want specially tailored
> is widely adopted and mainstream.

Yes, we're aware of that strategy.

> ISPs already have web servers
> and don't need Zope for what
> they are currently doing
> (though if *they* had manpower
> to take a close look, which
> they generally don't, they'd
> see some good reasons for
> using Zope too).

ISPs that don't need Zope aren't where we're targetting Zope.

> They also need to put in
> "commerce servers" and come
> up with some quite bizarre
> solutions using perl and
> MySQL or else have to pay through
> the nose.
>
> If Zope had an industrial
> strength turnkey commerce
> server it would be widely
> used by ISPs and would become
> "mainstream" like Apache -
> the Zope community would
> benefit greatly and DC's
> consulting revenue would
> grow greatly.

Do you have evidence that, by simply joining the list of already
available Open Source e-commerce systems (of which there are several),
Zope would suddenly be running at tens of millions of sites, like
Apache?  That's a stretch.

> Now how much do *I* get paid
> for trying to get DC to take
> a look?

Right.  No comment.

> If you win this argument you
> aren't going to get any tangible
> monetary benefit for DC either.
> 
> If somebody *does* take a look
> you just might. Think about it.

Independant of the diatribe, we plan to look at various ways to gain
e-commerce capabilities.

In the meantime, I suggest you cool down the rhetoric.  Also, I suggest
you participate, rather than pontificate.

--Paul