[Zope-dev] the Zope Framework project

[Kent Tenney]

On Thu, Mar 5, 2009 at 3:04 AM, Hermann Himmelbauer <dusty at qwer.tk> wrote:
> Am Mittwoch 04 März 2009 07:52:09 schrieb Chris McDonough:
>> Tather than reply in kind here, let me summarize:  I'm glad we agree more
>> than we disagree, and I apologize if I've attributed to you beliefs that
>> you don't have.  It's heartening to hear that you're in favor of most of
>> the things I'm also in favor of.  But we do have real differences in
>> opinion I think.  I'd rather be constructive than obstructionist here: at
>> the end of each item below I ask for an opinion based on a suggestion.
>>
>> 1)  I'm not in favor of a single steering group for the *entirety* of all
>> Zope software.   We've tried a similar thing in the past (via the
>> foundation structure); it didn't work and I'm not sure how we'd expect
>> things to turn out any differently this time.  Instead, perhaps the focus
>> of groups should be on some much smaller subset of Zope-related software
>> (e.g. the
>> zope.interface+zope.component group, the zope.schema group, the ZODB group,
>> etc).  Could we consider this?
>
> What I don't see in your proposal is, how these subset-groups would be
> coordinated, which leads to the following:
>
> - How would these groups be formed? If there's nobody who encourages people to
> do so,
>
> - Higher level package/groups may have a hard life in case basic
> packages/groups are not coordinated and all "go their own way".
>
> - How does some foreigner know, if a package is actively supported,
> umaintaned, deprecated etc.? How does he know, what packages exist, what they
> are good for and the like? For instance, I yesterday wrote that I use
> lovely.remotetask, then I was asked on the list why I did not use the (maybe
> better) zc.async package. Know why? I did not know that it existed.
>
> - I think, Zope 3 is not only about some seperate packages, but about a
> complete "programming experience". Thus there needs to be some integrating
> force, that draws together all these packages, writes some documentation /
> tutorial / website etc.
>
> - Newbies won't be attracted by single packages. Instead, they want something
> complete. Who would be interested in Plone if it would consist of various
> packages that people would have to draw together by themselves, without
> decent documentation?
>
> To my mind, one key point is attracting more users. And that can only be done
> if we try to view things from an external, newbie-perspective. Some Ruby on
> Rails / Java / Turbogears programmer will only be attracted by some "big
> picture" but probably not by a collection of some subpackages.
>
> So, my impression is that there is a need for some steering group, that will,
> however, encourage people to form groups around packages and maintain them.

I envision a "Council of Elders" with student representation.

The Elders either know, or know who knows the history and current
state of affairs,
the students know the struggles of the newbies.

They could provide welcome wagon, triage, and guide service for
navigating the Zope wilds.

>
> Best Regards,
> Hermann
>
> --
> hermann at qwer.tk
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