[Zope] Giving up in frustration

[Hadar Pedhazur]

On Mon, 16 Aug 1999, Hadar Pedhazur wrote: 
>> We give it away, and support the hell out of it, and yes,
>> documentation lags (sometimes too much).

Patrick Responded:

> I'm afraid I simply can't *afford* to sympathize with your
> last sentence and frankly I'm becoming very weary of
> seeing that sentiment put forth.

I understand that completely. I'll respond more fully below.

> As much as I may disagree with some of the ideas espoused
> by Richard Stallman, I wholeheartedly agree with his
> notion that application software lacking properly prepared
> documentation shouldn't be released until that defect has
> been fixed. Period.

Well, then there won't be too much free stuff of serious
value given away. We're yet to see a company like Digital
Creations make serious money over a long period of
time. We're pioneering a space, and paying dearly for the
priviledge. We're glad to do it, but exactly how would all
of the current "Powered by Zope" sites, testimonials, case
studies, etc., be accomplished if there was no software,
while it awaited the documentation?

> I doubt that the documentation writer DC has hired will
> ever catch up in the current climate.

You're correct. It was my hope that the ZDP effort would
help to ameliorate that problem. I, for one, think they've
made a very admirable dent. I also think that the list,
while a difficult thing to search, is an invaluable resource 
to the hardy.

To me, the problem with the docs were not a complete lack of
documentation, but rather a lack of organization.
Unfortunately, that allowed us to cede such an important
effort to a vigorous group of volunteers. I say
"unfortunately", because since then, 2.0 introduced so many
new concepts, that clearly reorganizing the old docs alone,
would not give us the clarity that we would need.

> I doubt that DC will ever achieve its goals until that
> problem is addressed. If I were running DC, I'd declare
> the following policy, effective immediately:

> """The current feature freeze on 2.0 will now be
> supplemented by a development freeze. All developers,
> salespeople, in fact anyone with a brain and a pair of
> eyes and hands, will reassign themselves to supporting the
> documentation effort until that effort has come abreast of
> the current and near-term development. Henceforth, we will
> *not* release until documentation is in hand."""

That may be a very realistic thing for us to do, seriously.
However, 2.0 is still not out, and it would have been wrong
(IMHO) to hold off the release that brings so many new
things (ZClasses, multi-threading, ZCatalog, etc.) until
they were all documented.

I realize that the effort on some people seems interminable.
For that I am sorry. Sorry not only for them, but for us,
for having lost an opportunity for another evangelist.
However, for each of those, there are many people who are
doing amazing things with Zope, witness Squishdot, Phillip
Eby's DTML tags, and many more that I should pay homage to
here... If we had waited for the docs to be updated, they'd
only be starting their efforts at some undetermined point in
the future, and the Zope world would be a sadder place for
that.

Please don't misunderstand this response. I think it's a
critical problem. However, I also think that the state of
the current docs, bad as they may be, are surmountable, and
have been surmounted by many people. After all, you do have
the source. I know that this isn't a mass market answer, but
Bradford himself gave an excellent example of how easy it
was to master Python, so those that want the power of Zope
sooner, should avail themselves of this (last-ditch) avenue.