[Zope] RE: [ZCommerce] RE: Philip leaves Arsdigita (was: Re:[Zope]kerberos ? + LDAP + ecommerce + ZEO replication etc)

[Richard Volpato]

I am new to this list.  I had been seeking insights and tools to run zope with ecommerce.  The blend of zope with OpenACS ecommerce seems just right.  Maybe DC need not do it, but it seems obvious to me that it should * encourage and direct * such a project. Current projects do not seem up to it.  Albert Langer seems keen on (even zealous) about the project - co-opt him in some way, if you have to.

E-commerce is an application. But the OpenACS version makes it an 'infra-structure' for community building.  This 'community enabling infrastructure' (Open)ACS really understands.  It's an understanding embedded in its SQL. They know how to transform a 'customer' into a 'member'.  I see no evidence that the zope community understands this deep wisdom about the nature of e-commerce as a 'collaborative co-production' rather than a simple transaction.  

Ironically, zope seems ideally suited to leverage this wisdom and its tools.  In particular, from interview comments I noticed from Paul E., the zope people really understand the value of meta-data and collecting it 'on the fly'.  It is a small step to extending the source of 'meta-data' from users and documents to *fellow*-users and *linked* documents respectively. This gets you to 'collaborative filtering'. It's also a small step for the resulting 'customers - cum - members' to access e-commerce in order to buy documents and services found within the trusted environs of their digital 'community'.  

Inevitably, Zope will need ecommerce - content management with 'delegation', meta-data, dynamic publishing etc *without* an e-commerce infra-structure seems misguided. It's probably a mind-set: meta-data, dynamic publishing,etc involve web applications and server technologies, not so much industrial strength transaction databases.  Postgresql with its enhancements means Zope could offer a new vision about transacting on the web, just like it has on publishing on the web.   To simply think 'e-commerce' is just some business 'extra' is to be missing the wood for the trees.  Strike now! while the OpenACS developer community looks for new alliances to restore their faith in 'open-source'.

For my part, even an announcement that DC was 'investigating' would be enough to convince my clients that this would be the way to go - thus getting some resource to help in the effort. I can't be alone in this.

Richard Volpato