On Tue, 28 Feb 2006 16:41:08 +0100 Martijn Faassen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Could you please stop using a new name for Zope 3 or the > zope package? You can explain this perfectly well using > the existing, well established names.
I strongly disagree with this sentiment. To me the name change for Zope 3 seems essential. I'm not strongly inclined as to whether "Z" or "Zed" or ? is a good choice for the name, but I think the google search argument suggests it should be spelled out rather than an initial. Also, if you want it pronounced "zed", you'd better spell it out for us Americans who will otherwise call it "zee". > This is a proposal for the evolution of Zope 3. Zope 3 is > already going in this direction. True. > This is what we are actually doing with Zope 2 right now, > starting with Five on top of Zope 2.7, and continued > further with Zope 2.8, Zope 2.9 and presumably Zope 2.10 > and beyond. It's nothing new, and it will take more > effort and time to get further. True. > Renaming this to Zed or Zope 5 is not going to make > anyone's life simpler or easier, False, IMO. > nor will it make any > development go faster than it does now. Instead we're > going to confuse everybody with completely uncalled for > name changes. The problem is that "Zope 3" is already very confusing. To anyone who is not among the Zope cognoscenti, the project is simply called "Zope" (though nobody knows what the **** it is!). It then has two versions "2" ="Stable" and "3"="Development". That's okay now, because it's more or less true. However, if you want Zope3 and Zope2 to co-exist, the names are a serious problem (from a marketing perspective), because to the people who matter -- potential new adopters -- there is tension between two different perceptions, neither of which is good: 1) The Zope project is hung as the result of a rewrite gone bad -- the Zope 3 project is eternally in "development" mode, leaving Zope 2 as a currently viable, but essentially orphaned project. "Run from the sinking ship!" 2) Zope2 is dead, Zope3 is the new Zope. But it is hard to learn and only for serious Python programmers. Zope is just a serious system-designers' package -- scripters should go try one of the other frameworks. "Not for me!" Yes I know that neither of these perceptions is true. But you will be engaged in a constant pitched battle against them if you stick with the existing nomenclature. If you instead call "Zope2" "Zope5" then you will defeat these interpretations, but shadow the Zope3 project (the "old version"). No matter how you spin it, the numbers imply either age or importance. You must lose the numbers, unless you really mean them to represent versions. (As cute as the name "Five" is, I hate "Zope 5". If you want to hang on to that idea, then instead rename Zope2 to "Five" (isn't it quickly becoming synonymous with that package?) and let Zope3 become "Zope"). Mind you, this suggests renamin "Zope Corporation" to "Five Corporation" and/or starting a whole new marketing campaign around a new name (yuck). I personally like the "Zed" name (but spell it out!), because it backforms well -- "ZOPE" = "Zed Object Publishing Environment" so the Z finally stands for something. Or so you can pretend, anyway. Meanwhile, Zed would be a toolkit for Python web application development. Hmm. "zed.com" is some kind of British TV site. "zed.org" is a dead link, but is apparently regitered. As for the "name change" confusing anyone -- it won't, because it's not a name change, it's a "fork" (or a refactoring if you like). The only people affected by this confusion are the developers themselves and the tightly-knit core of Zope3 developers -- all people who you can count on to figure it out no matter how confusing it is. The ones you can't afford to confuse are the new adopters, and they will find the present situation more confusing, IMHO. Of course, I'm just a user of Zope, not a core developer, but perhaps this makes me more aware of the market I'm talking about. I certainly do encounter some confusion when I try to explain the Zope situation to other people. Cheers, Terry -- Terry Hancock ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com _______________________________________________ Zope3-dev mailing list [email protected] Unsub: http://mail.zope.org/mailman/options/zope3-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
