Mailing List Archive

me too. so what to do ?
> Doing nothing means that we are stuck with a broken and unmaintained Plone
> 1 site as our public face for awhile longer. I don't think any of us
> really want that.

I piggyback on Geoff's insightful post and say the same thing about
Zwiki. It's bad marketing for the project I'm trying to grow here,
forgetting about Zope for a moment.

I mailed Rob and Jim directly offering to help with an upgrade. They are
the only people I know who could unblock the red tape that keeps
zope.org static. No response (under their radar, I expect).

So where does this leave us ? Isn't it time to fork zope.org ? Not in
the destructive bad-feeling sense. I mean isn't it up to we the
community to get organized, get focussed and build what we really want,
prove with running code and *happy users* that it works, and then come
back to see if Zope corp. wants to point zope.org there ? I don't expect
one such attempt will be enough, there should be several. I've done it
once at zopewiki.org. I'd love to see some plone-based visions of zope.org.

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Re: me too. so what to do ? [ In reply to ]
Simon Michael wrote:

>
>> Doing nothing means that we are stuck with a broken and unmaintained
>> Plone
>> 1 site as our public face for awhile longer. I don't think any of us
>> really want that.
>
>
> I piggyback on Geoff's insightful post and say the same thing about
> Zwiki. It's bad marketing for the project I'm trying to grow here,
> forgetting about Zope for a moment.
>
> I mailed Rob and Jim directly offering to help with an upgrade. They are
> the only people I know who could unblock the red tape that keeps
> zope.org static. No response (under their radar, I expect).
>
> So where does this leave us ? Isn't it time to fork zope.org ? Not in
> the destructive bad-feeling sense. I mean isn't it up to we the
> community to get organized, get focussed and build what we really want,
> prove with running code and *happy users* that it works, and then come
> back to see if Zope corp. wants to point zope.org there ? I don't expect
> one such attempt will be enough, there should be several. I've done it
> once at zopewiki.org. I'd love to see some plone-based visions of zope.org.
>

May i suggest you have a look at
http://codespeak.net/svn/z3/zopeweb/trunk/project.txt ?

I'd like to invite you to join the effort - but I don't want to think
about forking zope.org and i immediately loose interest when you say plone.

Michael

--
http://zope.org/Members/d2m
http://planetzope.org

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Re: me too. so what to do ? [ In reply to ]
On Wed, 01 Mar 2006 21:21:02 +0100, Michael Haubenwallner wrote:
> May i suggest you have a look at
> http://codespeak.net/svn/z3/zopeweb/trunk/project.txt ?
>
> I'd like to invite you to join the effort - but I don't want to think
> about forking zope.org and i immediately loose interest when you say plone.

Michael,

That effort sounds like a fine longer-term solution. I am talking about
something that could be deployed quickly with code that works today.
The focus would be on distribution and documentation of Zope 2, not of
Zope 3. I am suggesting Plone because there are software packages in
existence right now that fit the bill pretty well -- the point is to NOT
develop anything new but rather to improve the existing zope.org until
something better (such as the effort you describe, perhaps) is ready.

Geoff

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Re: me too. so what to do ? [ In reply to ]
> I'd like to invite you to join the effort - but I don't want to think
> about forking zope.org and i immediately loose interest when you say plone.

You are maintaining a plone site right now. Wouldn't you rather maintain
a supported version ?

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Re: me too. so what to do ? [ In reply to ]
On 1 Mar 2006, at 21:06, Simon Michael wrote:

>> I'd like to invite you to join the effort - but I don't want to
>> think about forking zope.org and i immediately loose interest when
>> you say plone.
>
> You are maintaining a plone site right now. Wouldn't you rather
> maintain a supported version ?

Wrong. *No one* is maintaining that software, including Michael. He
spends valuable time on the content side, as webmaster and on helping
plan a better solution.

Putting aside the discussion of what software is better and what is
not acceptable, the hard truth is this: Many people talk about
helping do continuing maintenance, but few do. A lot are willing to
propose and put in place their idea of a good solution, but very few
are going all the way and standing behind that solution from that
point on. Meaning maintaining the software, doing upgrades, resolving
problems.

As someone who has done years and years of large-scale sysadmin work,
unless the software is supported or has been chosen by the people who
will have to deal with it day after day after it has been put in
place it simply will not succeed. The current zope.org suffers from
that same problem. It became an immediate orphan because those people
who were tasked with maintaining the setup on a daily basis *hated*
it from Day 1.

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate everyones' ideas, and all of them
have merit. But none of them have a chance of success unless they are
backed by real-life people with access to the cluster and explicit
willingness and commitment to support it.

jens

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Re: me too. so what to do ? [ In reply to ]
On Wed, 01 Mar 2006 21:28:38 +0000, Jens Vagelpohl wrote:

> As someone who has done years and years of large-scale sysadmin work,
> unless the software is supported or has been chosen by the people who
> will have to deal with it day after day after it has been put in
> place it simply will not succeed. The current zope.org suffers from
> that same problem. It became an immediate orphan because those people
> who were tasked with maintaining the setup on a daily basis *hated*
> it from Day 1.

I would be truly surprised and disappointed if it were true that those
responsible for zope.org would put an emotional reaction to a piece of
code above the needs of the community that helps to sustain them.

Regardless, if the issue is primarily one of support, perhaps the Plone
community could help out until a solution that people love comes along?
For instance, if the Plone Foundation were to come up with resources in
the community to support a PloneHelpCenter/PloneSoftwareCenter-based
interim zope.org site, could that be made to happen? One possible
division of labor would be to have the existing volunteers be responsible
for the infrastructure they do not have a problem with (e.g. Zope / Python
/ Squid / LDAP / etc) and backups, and some Plone people could keep the
Products directory up to date? At this point I have no idea if this can
be made to happen on the Plone side, but I would guess that enough people
would find the prospect sufficiently important that the resources could be
found. If the idea is feasible, I would be happy to take the matter up in
the Plone community.

If the proposed alternative will be ready for production in the near-term,
though, this is all a moot point. Is there a solid timeline on the
replacement under discussion?

Geoff

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Re: me too. so what to do ? [ In reply to ]
On 1 Mar 2006, at 22:53, Geoff Davis wrote:

> On Wed, 01 Mar 2006 21:28:38 +0000, Jens Vagelpohl wrote:
>
>> As someone who has done years and years of large-scale sysadmin work,
>> unless the software is supported or has been chosen by the people who
>> will have to deal with it day after day after it has been put in
>> place it simply will not succeed. The current zope.org suffers from
>> that same problem. It became an immediate orphan because those people
>> who were tasked with maintaining the setup on a daily basis *hated*
>> it from Day 1.
>
> I would be truly surprised and disappointed if it were true that those
> responsible for zope.org would put an emotional reaction to a piece of
> code above the needs of the community that helps to sustain them.

I won't be drawn into the same old flame war why it was not well-
received that has been had again and again. And being polemic doesn't
help, Geoff. I'm trying to make a point about lack of capable and
available resources, and a complete disconnect between those
resources and the package they are directed to support.


> Regardless, if the issue is primarily one of support, perhaps the
> Plone
> community could help out until a solution that people love comes
> along?
> For instance, if the Plone Foundation were to come up with
> resources in
> the community to support a PloneHelpCenter/PloneSoftwareCenter-based
> interim zope.org site, could that be made to happen? One possible
> division of labor would be to have the existing volunteers be
> responsible
> for the infrastructure they do not have a problem with (e.g. Zope /
> Python
> / Squid / LDAP / etc) and backups, and some Plone people could keep
> the
> Products directory up to date? At this point I have no idea if
> this can
> be made to happen on the Plone side, but I would guess that enough
> people
> would find the prospect sufficiently important that the resources
> could be
> found. If the idea is feasible, I would be happy to take the
> matter up in
> the Plone community.

This isn't as easy as it seems, and simple provisioning of manpower
is only one small part.

Anyone who wants to actively support zope.org work needs to sign the
required non-disclosure agreement, see http://www.zope.org/About/
point 4. Most of that document is outdated, but the legal requirement
remains. A lot of well-meaning people fall at this hurdle because
they don't want to sign anything.

The "division of labor" on the cluster is a bit less than conducive
to decisive action than it might be. One part, the caching, cannot be
touched because it runs through separate cache servers which are
shared with Zope Managed Hosting customer cache services.

There is no clear group of "current volunteers" for the software and
the surrounding network services. A few people have logins (3 or 4
outside ZC I believe), but no clear delineation of responsibilities
(X is responsible for Zope, Y manages the LDAP server, etc) exists.

Putting up different software must be accompanied by providing
suitable integration with existing parts of the site, and possibly at
least a little bit of migration for important pieces.

The final decision about what is put onto those servers is not just a
volunteer decision. At least right now ZC must support a decision
before it can be put into practice.


> If the proposed alternative will be ready for production in the
> near-term,
> though, this is all a moot point. Is there a solid timeline on the
> replacement under discussion?

I'm not aware of any timeline.

jens

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Re: me too. so what to do ? [ In reply to ]
On Wed, 01 Mar 2006 23:22:54 +0000, Jens Vagelpohl wrote:

> This isn't as easy as it seems, and simple provisioning of manpower
> is only one small part.
>
> Anyone who wants to actively support zope.org work needs to sign the
> required non-disclosure agreement, see http://www.zope.org/About/
> point 4. Most of that document is outdated, but the legal requirement
> remains. A lot of well-meaning people fall at this hurdle because
> they don't want to sign anything.
>
> The "division of labor" on the cluster is a bit less than conducive
> to decisive action than it might be. One part, the caching, cannot be
> touched because it runs through separate cache servers which are
> shared with Zope Managed Hosting customer cache services.
>
> There is no clear group of "current volunteers" for the software and
> the surrounding network services. A few people have logins (3 or 4
> outside ZC I believe), but no clear delineation of responsibilities
> (X is responsible for Zope, Y manages the LDAP server, etc) exists.
>
> Putting up different software must be accompanied by providing
> suitable integration with existing parts of the site, and possibly at
> least a little bit of migration for important pieces.
>
> The final decision about what is put onto those servers is not just a
> volunteer decision. At least right now ZC must support a decision
> before it can be put into practice.

Thanks for your response, Jens. I don't want to start a flame war. We
are where we are, and let's leave it at that.

I think the concerns that you raise are reasonable ones. Integration
issues are certainly things to be concerned about. They are technical
problems, though, and those are the kinds of things we in the Zope
community are good at solving.

The issues I am more concerned about are the social / political ones. The
signature issue is interesting, but probably surmountable -- all Plone
contributors are required to sign a contributor agreement.

In my mind, the real questions are:

1) If the Plone community were to be good Zope citizens and come up with
some volunteers and code for an improved, interim zope.org site, would ZC
approve?

2) Could we get support from others in the Zope community for
infrastructure _not_ related to Plone?

3) Could we arrange a reasonable division of labor for systems
administration so that things can get done?

Geoff

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Re: me too. so what to do ? [ In reply to ]
Simon Michael wrote:
>
>> Doing nothing means that we are stuck with a broken and unmaintained
>> Plone
>> 1 site as our public face for awhile longer. I don't think any of us
>> really want that.
>
>
> I piggyback on Geoff's insightful post and say the same thing about
> Zwiki. It's bad marketing for the project I'm trying to grow here,
> forgetting about Zope for a moment.
>
> I mailed Rob and Jim directly offering to help with an upgrade. They are
> the only people I know who could unblock the red tape that keeps
> zope.org static. No response (under their radar, I expect).

More or less. I'm very sorry for a lack of response. We are
both insanely busy and can't pay attention to this. That is no
excuse, but there it is. It is not a simple thing to install
new software into the zope.org application. Frankly, it is working
well enough ATM that I'm not anxious to try to update it.

> So where does this leave us ? Isn't it time to fork zope.org ? Not in
> the destructive bad-feeling sense. I mean isn't it up to we the
> community to get organized, get focussed and build what we really want,
> prove with running code and *happy users* that it works, and then come
> back to see if Zope corp. wants to point zope.org there ? I don't expect
> one such attempt will be enough, there should be several. I've done it
> once at zopewiki.org. I'd love to see some plone-based visions of zope.org.

I think this is a great idea. I hope that you'll be coming back to the
Zope Foundation with a new site, not to ZC.

The number one thing that Rob is doing to improve the process for managing
zope.org is to form the Foundation. We are very close to getting the
legal paperwork done, but realistically I'm sure it will be a few months
before we can get a board elected and operating. It would be great for
people to build a site as a "prototype" that could be adopted when the
Foundation is ready.

Jim

--
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CTO (540) 361-1714 http://www.python.org
Zope Corporation http://www.zope.com http://www.zope.org
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Re: me too. so what to do ? [ In reply to ]
Jens Vagelpohl <jens <at> dataflake.org> writes:

> This isn't as easy as it seems, and simple provisioning of manpower
> is only one small part.


<snip red tape>

That's so incredibly stupid I can't believe no-one's ever done anything about
it. Considering that Zope is largely community-maintained, the community
deserves to have some more direct control over the website. As open source
developers, we surely all understand that if you make something sufficiently
hard, people won't bother even with the best of intentions. zope.org is so
miserable it deserves to die or at least be sectioned off to an old.zope.org and
locked down, with a new site that has had some proper thinking behind it in its
place.

My suggestion to the community would be to set up an unofficial Zope site for
the time being, running in whatever CMS they want to use, hell, using static
HTML in Apache if they wish, that presents the information they want to present
and provides the features they want to see, and gives them the power to do so.
When the Zope Foundation happens, they can take ownership and find a route
towards making such a site official by merging it with or letting it supplant
the existing site, if that's appropriate.

In open source, this is called forking and happens when the process around the
old project became too much misalgigned with the needs and wishes of the
community. I don't see why that project's outward facing website should be any
different. After all, it's the hard work of Jens and Stephan van W and Andreas
and Jim and Gary and Martijn and Stephan R and everyone else that drives Zope
forward (and most of those guys are not ZC employees). Do they not deserve to
have their efforts appropriately presented ... especially when there are people
willing in principle to spend their spare time doing that?

Martin



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Re: me too. so what to do ? [ In reply to ]
Jim Fulton <jim <at> zope.com> writes:

> The number one thing that Rob is doing to improve the process for managing
> zope.org is to form the Foundation. We are very close to getting the
> legal paperwork done, but realistically I'm sure it will be a few months
> before we can get a board elected and operating. It would be great for
> people to build a site as a "prototype" that could be adopted when the
> Foundation is ready.

That's great news! Thanks Jim!

Martin

(oh my God, I hate the GMANE web interface post style Nazi so much! This text
exists to improve the quoted-to-non-quoted ratio...)

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Re: me too. so what to do ? [ In reply to ]
At PyCon, Jim Fulton said that decisions about zope.org about will be
handled by Zope Foundation. They'll provide an organizational
structure for volunteers to contribute content to zope.org. If you
want to contribute to the decision making on this structure, you will
be able join Zope Foundation and vote on board members.

I get the impression that the creation of Zope Foundation is
imminent, but it may still take some time after that to put together
a plan for a new zope.org. In the meantime, we can still put together
an unofficial prototype site and content.




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Re: me too. so what to do ? [ In reply to ]
On Wed, 01 Mar 2006 18:50:48 -0500, Jim Fulton wrote:

> I think this is a great idea. I hope that you'll be coming back to the
> Zope Foundation with a new site, not to ZC.
>
> The number one thing that Rob is doing to improve the process for
> managing zope.org is to form the Foundation. We are very close to
> getting the legal paperwork done, but realistically I'm sure it will be
> a few months before we can get a board elected and operating. It would
> be great for people to build a site as a "prototype" that could be
> adopted when the Foundation is ready.

Jim,

Thanks for your response. If we set something up and make it live for
testing / feedback, is there a good way to avoid copyright / trademark
headaches?

Geoff

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Re: me too. so what to do ? [ In reply to ]
On 1 Mar 2006, at 23:45, Geoff Davis wrote:
> The issues I am more concerned about are the social / political
> ones. The
> signature issue is interesting, but probably surmountable -- all Plone
> contributors are required to sign a contributor agreement.

But don't forget - this agreement is with what many people perceive
as "big bad Zope Corporation"... I know quite a few people who would
not sign it because they are paranoid about ZC.


> 1) If the Plone community were to be good Zope citizens and come up
> with
> some volunteers and code for an improved, interim zope.org site,
> would ZC
> approve?

This is up for ZC to decide. If I was at ZC I would support it as
long as a committed and capable subset of the Plone community (not
Joe Shmoe off the street, but credible people) is willing to support
the Plone side (meaning anything "above" CMF) 100%.


> 2) Could we get support from others in the Zope community for
> infrastructure _not_ related to Plone?

I'm one of the people with a login, and I'm willing to support
anything up to and including CMF.


> 3) Could we arrange a reasonable division of labor for systems
> administration so that things can get done?

I'm sure this can be done with ZC cooperation. Personally, I'm in
favor of more rather than less central control when it comes to
systems administration. If you have many people who are supposed to
"be responsible" then you either have all of them falling over each
other when a problem occurs, or no one shows up because the
assumption is that another person will pick it up.

I guess basically I'm saying "if you want to do it, then do it right,
otherwise it's not worth the effort".

jens

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Re: me too. so what to do ? [ In reply to ]
Geoff Davis wrote:
> On Wed, 01 Mar 2006 18:50:48 -0500, Jim Fulton wrote:
>
>
>>I think this is a great idea. I hope that you'll be coming back to the
>>Zope Foundation with a new site, not to ZC.
>>
>>The number one thing that Rob is doing to improve the process for
>>managing zope.org is to form the Foundation. We are very close to
>>getting the legal paperwork done, but realistically I'm sure it will be
>>a few months before we can get a board elected and operating. It would
>>be great for people to build a site as a "prototype" that could be
>>adopted when the Foundation is ready.
>
>
> Jim,
>
> Thanks for your response. If we set something up and make it live for
> testing / feedback, is there a good way to avoid copyright / trademark
> headaches?

I suppose. What sort of copyright / trademark headaches?

Jim

--
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Re: me too. so what to do ? [ In reply to ]
Jens Vagelpohl <jens <at> dataflake.org> writes:

> > 1) If the Plone community were to be good Zope citizens and come up
> > with
> > some volunteers and code for an improved, interim zope.org site,
> > would ZC
> > approve?
>
> This is up for ZC to decide. If I was at ZC I would support it as
> long as a committed and capable subset of the Plone community (not
> Joe Shmoe off the street, but credible people) is willing to support
> the Plone side (meaning anything "above" CMF) 100%.

If the technology is basically the same as plone.org, which it probably will be
given that the use cases are so similar and we've learnt a ton of lessions from
plone.org, I think this is pretty much a given. The one thing that makes limi
fix something faster than you can say pointrelease is when plone.org looks ugly,
and when he harasses me, I fix the PloneHelpCenter and PloneSoftwareCenter.
Wiggy keeps making PlonePAS better to support plone.org LDAP, and Geoff makes
CacheFu fly on plone.org. And that's pretty much all that plone.org needs above
standard Plone.

> > 2) Could we get support from others in the Zope community for
> > infrastructure _not_ related to Plone?
>
> I'm one of the people with a login, and I'm willing to support
> anything up to and including CMF.

Again - if people were a bit more proud of zope.org, I'm sure they'd be more
inclined to fix it. At the moment, it's given that it's an embarassment, so
no-one cares if it goes from bad to slightly worse.

Martin




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Re: me too. so what to do ? [ In reply to ]
On Wed, 01 Mar 2006 19:07:38 -0500, Jim Fulton wrote:

>> Thanks for your response. If we set something up and make it live for
>> testing / feedback, is there a good way to avoid copyright / trademark
>> headaches?
>
> I suppose. What sort of copyright / trademark headaches?

Zope Corp owns the "Zope" trademark and the copyright to the content of
zope.org. If a group of people put up a site at interim-zope.plone.org or
www.interim-zope.org or whatever and started moving zope.org content over
to it with the intention of handing things over to the Zope Foundation,
how should they avoid running afoul of trademark / copyright violations?

Geoff


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Re: me too. so what to do ? [ In reply to ]
On 2 Mar 2006, at 00:10, Martin Aspeli wrote:
>>> 2) Could we get support from others in the Zope community for
>>> infrastructure _not_ related to Plone?
>>
>> I'm one of the people with a login, and I'm willing to support
>> anything up to and including CMF.
>
> Again - if people were a bit more proud of zope.org, I'm sure
> they'd be more
> inclined to fix it. At the moment, it's given that it's an
> embarassment, so
> no-one cares if it goes from bad to slightly worse.

IMHO this is the whole "supported by the people who have to deal with
it every day" point, just worded differently. And a dose of
resignation, "nothing will change, anyway".

There are some initiatives underway already, including a Z3-based
initiative, but no unified voice. There is no single person charged
with driving a new zope.org, someone in a position to make binding
decisions. Maybe that's why these discussions tend to fade away?

jens

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Re: me too. so what to do ? [ In reply to ]
Geoff Davis wrote:
> On Wed, 01 Mar 2006 19:07:38 -0500, Jim Fulton wrote:
>
>
>>>Thanks for your response. If we set something up and make it live for
>>>testing / feedback, is there a good way to avoid copyright / trademark
>>>headaches?
>>
>>I suppose. What sort of copyright / trademark headaches?
>
>
> Zope Corp owns the "Zope" trademark and the copyright to the content of
> zope.org. If a group of people put up a site at interim-zope.plone.org or
> www.interim-zope.org or whatever and started moving zope.org content over
> to it with the intention of handing things over to the Zope Foundation,
> how should they avoid running afoul of trademark / copyright violations?

Sigh. I dunno. I'll try to find out when I get back from PyCon.

Jim

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Re: me too. so what to do ? [ In reply to ]
Geoff Davis <geoff <at> phds.org> writes:
> Zope Corp owns the "Zope" trademark and the copyright to the content of
> zope.org.

I haven't heard that before. Did the writers and commenters make such a binding
agreement ? Did the product authors ? Manuals and logo, maybe. Is this really a
problem ?

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Re: me too. so what to do ? [ In reply to ]
On 3/1/06, Simon Michael <simon@joyful.com> wrote:
> So where does this leave us ? Isn't it time to fork zope.org ? Not in
> the destructive bad-feeling sense. I mean isn't it up to we the
> community to get organized, get focussed and build what we really want,
> prove with running code and *happy users* that it works, and then come
> back to see if Zope corp. wants to point zope.org there ? I don't expect
> one such attempt will be enough, there should be several.

Absolutely. Aside from practical/political issues, one reason for
zope.orgs problems is that it is huge, and it doesn't have to be. We
could make several "microsites", and these could start out as forked,
and they don't have to live on the same computer or een on the same
network.

For example...

products.zope.org for Zope2 products?
docs.zope.org for documentation (mainly the Zope books + zopewiki)?
news.zope.org for news?

or whatever. :)

--
Lennart Regebro, Nuxeo http://www.nuxeo.com/
CPS Content Management http://www.cps-project.org/
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Re: me too. so what to do ? [ In reply to ]
Oh, and something that COULD be done on zope.org right now is fixing
the frontpage. We can replace the main column content with the right
column content of Toms http://www.modscape.com/zope/v2 immediately,
and stop scaring people to death when they reach Zope.org.
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Re: me too. so what to do ? [ In reply to ]
Geoff Davis wrote:
> 2) Could we get support from others in the Zope community for
> infrastructure _not_ related to Plone?

Yes, but it needs to be minimal and simple. No big frameworks like CPS
or Plone are either minimal or simple. ZWiki meets the criteria but
wikis have their own problems...

> 3) Could we arrange a reasonable division of labor for systems
> administration so that things can get done?

The trouble is that everything in a project like this is highly
transitive. People think they'll be able to help, then they get busy and
can't help anymore. Myself and Jens were really up for helping about a
year ago, but then we both lost most of our time to a "big project".

Michael's been fantastic for a long time, but even so, he may not
_always_ be able to help...

cheers,

Chris

--
Simplistix - Content Management, Zope & Python Consulting
- http://www.simplistix.co.uk

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Re: me too. so what to do ? [ In reply to ]
<This is from Mark whose email doesn't seem to go through to the
list, so he asked me to forward it>


-----------------------------

Hi all,


> IMHO this is the whole "supported by the people who have to deal
> with it every day" point, just worded differently. And a dose of
> resignation, "nothing will change, anyway".
>
> There are some initiatives underway already, including a Z3-based
> initiative, but no unified voice. There is no single person charged
> with driving a new zope.org, someone in a position to make binding
> decisions. Maybe that's why these discussions tend to fade away?
>

I have been passively reading these threads and find myself in total
agreement with Jens.

Lately, I haven't had much time to devote to Zope but beyond my day
job I have been volunteering a lot of time (even joined the board)
of a non-profit .org and based on this experience I'd like to share
some of the things I have observed.

At this stage it does not make much sense to talk about technology
but about creating an organizational structure; "a group"
that meets regularly (skype conference call / irc, whatever).

Here are a few things that would have to happen in that group:

- Someone needs to stick (as in stick to a task) and lead (as in
mediate/chair) meetings, collect points for an agenda,
and make sure during meetings that people stay on topic.

Working groups need to focus on specific topics. You have to answer
the basics:

- Who (as in who is the audience / who is zope.org for?)
- What (as in what does the audience expect? what are the goals of
the site / what do we hope hope to accomplish with a new zope.org)
- Where (this one is easy :-)
- Why (as in why should people care about zope? why is zope relevant?
why would/should they visit the site?)

Once you have answered these questions things become will become more
clear.

Just ask yourself the following question. Which organizations/
customers do you know say to you:

We should use zope, plone, drupal, etc.

I don't know about you guys but NONE of my customers care one iota
about technology.

They will say things to me like: We have the following requirements/
needs can you build us a solution that meets those needs.?

I think any new zope.org site should be approached the same way. We
should define the needs first then select the solution that best
meets those needs.

Cheers,

Mark

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Re: me too. so what to do ? [ In reply to ]
Jens Vagelpohl <jens <at> dataflake.org> writes:

> > Again - if people were a bit more proud of zope.org, I'm sure
> > they'd be more
> > inclined to fix it. At the moment, it's given that it's an
> > embarassment, so
> > no-one cares if it goes from bad to slightly worse.
>
> IMHO this is the whole "supported by the people who have to deal with
> it every day" point, just worded differently. And a dose of
> resignation, "nothing will change, anyway".

Precisely...

> There are some initiatives underway already, including a Z3-based
> initiative, but no unified voice. There is no single person charged
> with driving a new zope.org, someone in a position to make binding
> decisions. Maybe that's why these discussions tend to fade away?

... and precisely again. So let's call for someone to own this, elect a person
that is in charge, and give him or her the authority they need to do the job,
not present them with an ocean of red tape. Absolutely nothing happens unless
someone ownes the task, people don't just magically organise themselves and get
stuff done when they don't even know what that stuff is. It's pretty common
sense, really. :)

I suggest that Jim or Rob or you or someone else a bit closer to the core of the
Zope community puts out a job description and runs a vote. Get someone in
charge, let them make their demands, and off we go.

Martin

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