Re: [Zope3-Users] Generations of Zope and Enterprise Culture
On 2/9/06, Edward Pollard [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: place to be. However, non-Zope development groups on campus have asked me: So, what will we do when another version of Zope comes along that will completely break backwards compatibility again? Nothing. Why would yo do anything? Zope3 will not stop working if Zope4 comes along, just as Zope2 has not stopped working when Zope3 came along. Certainly this discussion has to have taken place somewhere before. Oh yeah. Hundreds of thousands of times with different software. It's a variation of the forward compatibility-discussion, but forward compatibility is a myth. Nobody can predict the future. Will the bright minds behind Zope 3 come up with something even brighter and make something completely new? Possibly, we don't know. Or some Ruby guys will come up with it and everybody will shift to a new completely incompatible version of Ruby on Rails. Or Microsoft can suddenly decide to go open source. NOBODY KNOWS. All we can do is guess, and most of our guesses wll be wrong. Therefore: You do today, what works today, and worry about tomorrow when it happens. For example, what did you do in 1998, and did you in 1998 know what you would be doing today? If you in 1998 knew that you were going to have a Zope 2 based website, then they have a point. If you don't, then they don't have a point. :-) Now, how you break that information to management, is nothing I can help you with. ;-) We have as much invested in ColdFusion as we do Zope 2 and there is a perceptual issue here I'm not certain how to correct via education. Ah! But unlike Zope2 or Zope3, ColdFusion *will* break when incompatible versions come out, because it's closed source, so you can't fix the bugs. With open source you can. If the bug is too complex, yo can pay somebody to fix it for with. With ColdFusion, you're up shit creek without a debugger. Clearly Zope 3 does so much more out of the box to support the standards based semantically driven web site we are saying we want in our needs assessment documents, but it is a hard thing to sell. I'm the worst salesman in the world. All I can do is shoot other peoples arguments to pieces. ;-) Second, the existence of Zope 3 has completely shot any support for Zope 2 continuation out of the water in our environment. Is this fair, or is there life left to the Zope 2 tree we've developed some experience in? Should I be considering pitching a Zope 2 solution instead? There is definitely life in Zope2 left. It will without any doubt be supported and developed for years to come, although the development is now mostly on consolidation with Zope3. -- Lennart Regebro, Nuxeo http://www.nuxeo.com/ CPS Content Management http://www.cps-project.org/ ___ Zope3-users mailing list Zope3-users@zope.org http://mail.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope3-users
Re: [Zope3-Users] Generations of Zope and Enterprise Culture
On 2/10/06, Edward Pollard [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Is this a viable strategy? We'd really be starting from scratch, so would such an approach enhance our work or hold us back? Five is a viable strategy, but unless you need Zope2 products it will most likely just hold you back. It seems the more I read about Five the less I understand the point of Zope3, but I chalk that up to my ignorance. Well, no, Five is all about getting Zope3 technology into Zope2. It's there fore people who want the component thinking but can't move to Zope3. It may be that Five ends up making Zope2 and Zope3 merge completely in some future, but as noted before: Nobody really knows how the world looks in five years. -- Lennart Regebro, Nuxeo http://www.nuxeo.com/ CPS Content Management http://www.cps-project.org/ ___ Zope3-users mailing list Zope3-users@zope.org http://mail.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope3-users
Re: [Zope3-Users] Generations of Zope and Enterprise Culture
On Thursday 09 February 2006 17:53, Max M wrote: Edward Pollard wrote: Second, the existence of Zope 3 has completely shot any support for Zope 2 continuation out of the water in our environment. Is this fair, or is there life left to the Zope 2 tree we've developed some experience in? Should I be considering pitching a Zope 2 solution instead? Why don't you just install Five, and take it from there? Your old codebase can be gradually updated to Zope^3 technologies. I second that. Several companies have successfully started to migrate to Zope 3 by using their existing code and transforming it more and more to using Five as a bridge. It is incremental and pretty risk free. Regards, Stephan -- Stephan Richter CBU Physics Chemistry (B.S.) / Tufts Physics (Ph.D. student) Web2k - Web Software Design, Development and Training ___ Zope3-users mailing list Zope3-users@zope.org http://mail.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope3-users
[Zope3-Users] Generations of Zope and Enterprise Culture
Hi all, I work for a post-secondary institution in Canada that has deployed a lightly-featured proprietary CMS developed in Zope 2. We are currently outlining the next-generation of our website which will involve much broader integration of campus data. There are phenomenally unusual enterprise environmental factors (read: internal politics) around our website so it is very hard to explain what has happened, why it has happened, and what we are trying to accomplish. All you really need to know is that we are at a place where their will be some considerable development from scratch. The question hanging at the committee level right now is Zope 2, Zope 3, or something else? I've read the Zope 2 vs Zope 3 threads, and the Zope 3 readiness discusion, and both were educational. It would seem that since we don't have a really strong need to keep our Zope 2 codebase, Zope 3 is the place to be. However, non-Zope development groups on campus have asked me: So, what will we do when another version of Zope comes along that will completely break backwards compatibility again? They find the transition from 2 to 3 intimidating, cavalier, and hostile to the userbase. I don't entirely blame them, as on the surface it is a compelling perspective. Certainly this discussion has to have taken place somewhere before. How has Zope 2 vs 3 been sold to the management level? How has it been sold to people who are skeptical of the future roadmap based on the past change in paradigm? How has it been sold to people that prefer commercially supported software? We have as much invested in ColdFusion as we do Zope 2 and there is a perceptual issue here I'm not certain how to correct via education. Clearly Zope 3 does so much more out of the box to support the standards based semantically driven web site we are saying we want in our needs assessment documents, but it is a hard thing to sell. Since I really can't explain the environmental factors in any depth, let me rephrase: How do you sell Zope 3 as a solution? And what do you do to overcome the perception that our investment in Zope 2 will have little to no payoff in a Zope 3 developed project? There are two side issues: First, ColdFusion and ASP are the other candidates, so while I don't want to encourage and dwell on specific comparisons, I would be lying if I said they wouldn't come in handy. Second, the existence of Zope 3 has completely shot any support for Zope 2 continuation out of the water in our environment. Is this fair, or is there life left to the Zope 2 tree we've developed some experience in? Should I be considering pitching a Zope 2 solution instead? Thanks for your time, --- Edward J. Pollard, B.Sc Webmaster, University of Lethbridge ___ Zope3-users mailing list Zope3-users@zope.org http://mail.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope3-users
Re: [Zope3-Users] Generations of Zope and Enterprise Culture
On Feb 9, 2006, at 3:53 PM, Max M wrote: Edward Pollard wrote: Second, the existence of Zope 3 has completely shot any support for Zope 2 continuation out of the water in our environment. Is this fair, or is there life left to the Zope 2 tree we've developed some experience in? Should I be considering pitching a Zope 2 solution instead? Why don't you just install Five, and take it from there? Your old codebase can be gradually updated to Zope^3 technologies. Is this a viable strategy? We'd really be starting from scratch, so would such an approach enhance our work or hold us back? It seems the more I read about Five the less I understand the point of Zope3, but I chalk that up to my ignorance. Ed ___ Zope3-users mailing list Zope3-users@zope.org http://mail.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope3-users
Re: [Zope3-Users] Generations of Zope and Enterprise Culture
Edward Pollard wrote: Zope 3 On Feb 9, 2006, at 3:53 PM, Max M wrote: Zope^3 Edward Pollard wrote: Zope3 I'm *so* glad to see that our marketing efforts are resulting in us presenting a unified brand image. -- Benji York Senior Software Engineer Zope Corporation ___ Zope3-users mailing list Zope3-users@zope.org http://mail.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope3-users
Re: [Zope3-Users] Generations of Zope and Enterprise Culture
On Feb 9, 2006, at 5:20 PM, Edward Pollard wrote: [...] Since I really can't explain the environmental factors in any depth, let me rephrase: How do you sell Zope 3 as a solution? It depends on the audience. It also depends on who's talking. The people who do this selling on a regular basis don't often hang out here. Here's an attempt by a developer. Whoever you talk to, you can talk about the success of Zope 2, the CMF, and Plone. If the audience is people interested in through-the-web programming, you steer them to a Zope 2 based solution (at least right now). If the audience is comprised of experienced programmers, ideally with Python experience, and even more ideally with ZODB experience, you might mention the years of experience that went into the Zope 3 redesign. You might talk about the clean design, the excellent test culture, the emphasis on documentation, the better reuse options, and the embracing of other Python projects. You might point out the two Zope 3 books available in such a relatively short time after the Zope 3 release. If the audience is interested in the ZODB, you talk about the ACID compliance, the recent improvements to the conflict handling (MVCC), and so on. If the audience is further comprised of people who work on big sites, you talk about the scalability of ZEO, and the open-source front-end options. If the audience is concerned about yet-another-Zope-3-rewrite, you first acknowledge their are no guarantees. Then you can mention that Jim Fulton, Zope Pope, has said that he won't write a Zope 4. You can also talk about some of the Zope 2/Zope 3 efforts, which I mention below. Maybe others can offer more. I'm just moving on to the next question. :-) And what do you do to overcome the perception that our investment in Zope 2 will have little to no payoff in a Zope 3 developed project? It's likely that you have four kinds of knowledge from your Zope 2 investment: - Python knowledge (good for Zope 3) - Templating knowledge (good for Zope 3: DTML and ZPT exist) - ZODB knowledge (good for Zope 3) - Zope 2/CMF tool knowledge (you'll want to forget a lot of this, although concepts like object publishing, tree traversal, object file system, and CMF tools carry over in some recognizable ways) So you're losing part of the fourth category. The relative percentage loss that represents for you is something only you can answer. The return for switching is a clean, powerful, test-driven architecture: pretty exciting, to me. There are two side issues: First, ColdFusion and ASP are the other candidates, so while I don't want to encourage and dwell on specific comparisons, I would be lying if I said they wouldn't come in handy. I'm afraid my knowledge of these is very out of date. Python is an obvious important differentiator, though perhaps .Net's CLR and the upcoming 1.0 release of IronPython might change that story. Second, the existence of Zope 3 has completely shot any support for Zope 2 continuation out of the water in our environment. Is this fair, or is there life left to the Zope 2 tree we've developed some experience in? Should I be considering pitching a Zope 2 solution instead? I don't know: that's a very hard question. I'll mention a few interesting data points, FWIW. I think most or all of the big Zope-based companies still make their living mostly on Zope 2 code. Some are moving towards Zope 3 via Zope 2/Five, and some are moving their applications piece by piece to Zope 3, whole cloth. Jim Fulton, Zope Pope, works for a company like that, and has voiced significant interest in Zope 2 merging with Zope 3. Many others in the community feel that way too. No easy answers. ;-) Gary ___ Zope3-users mailing list Zope3-users@zope.org http://mail.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope3-users
