[Zope] What causes the community to stall so often?

[BZ]

I am not sure if it is the community stalling so much as hitting the peaks 
and valleys of the development cycle. 

Besides, the Zope Corp people I am sure that most of us have full time (or 
at least part time) jobs that are non Zope. I have had mostly-full time 
Zope jobs and when I was doing that I was more involved in writing tips, 
how-tos, products, etc. 

I think Zope documentation (not the Zope product) suffers from the critical 
mass. There has to be enough people in the pot to be able to both develop 
and document. Right now, most of us are focusing on developing products, 
applications, websites and not on documentation. It is also clear that 
documentation itself does not provide income. If I build out another 
website in Zope, I can build a community and another revenue source. If I 
write a how-to, well, I get a gold star in the community (maybe) and it 
that good open source "warm feeling." So, it comes down to economics. 

That being said, there are now 3 (maybe 4) books out there on Zope and I 
can easily remember the day when there was a total of 0. There are more and 
more products being developed and not just stupid discussion boards :) but 
real, meaty products that people can make money with. That trend is a good 
trend. As the economy picks back up, there will be more work for 
consultants, more consulting and more demand and production of 
documentation. 

Do we need more books, websites, help areas, FAQ's, etc? Yes. Will they 
come? Yes. I have at least two of those in (not telling which ones) in the 
works. But time is money and money is the key.

BZ