[Zope] Re: Zope magazine

[Mark Pratt]

Hi Heimo,

and all other zope@zope.org mailinglist subscribers ...

On Thu, 18 Apr 2002, Heimo Laukkanen wrote:

> Hi Mark ( and everyone on the c:d zope-mailinglist),
> 
> just stumbled into Zopemag-site and saw what you at behiive have been 
> up to (http://zopemag.com/Issue001/index.html). My first thougth was 
> that what a nice idea, untill I realized that it isn't that great idea 
> - since the magazine is based on paid subscriptions.

You know I really have a problem with that logic.

I believe its a great idea regardless of whether it is a free magazine
or commercial because the point is with ZopeMag we are creating another
resource. "Free" is only "free" if time has no value.

We believe that it will save our readers a ton of time. They will stay
up-to-date on recent Zope Products, topics not covered anywhere else
or not in enough detail.
 
> I do know that people need to get paid for their work, but that also 
> raises the question about what people are getting for the money they 
> pay. For example judging by the first issue ( it is not fair to judge 
> by the covers, I know ) , there isn't much to pay for yet.

Did you read about the format? The "Find out more" button and the
other information before you subscribe should answer these questions. 
Our readers can expect to find regular and fresh content every two weeks.

> I am all up to educating people more about zope and canonical 
> documents like good howto's reports, articles and books are propably 
> the best guidance -- and after that people need technical 
> documentation. Zopemag now raises a couple of questions:
> 
> 1) What is editorial policy:
>       - who can and will contribute
>       - what do you will pay for the contributors

These are valid questions and I with your permission will use
them to help answer them for any contributors.

Q: Who can and will contribute?

Anybody is welcome to send us an article outline. 
We'll take it from there.

We are willing to pay contributors. But clearly that depends
on several factors including the length of an article. This
particular point in my opinion does not belong on this mailinglist.

> 2) Openess policy
>       - how much content will be open in the future
>         for example would something like making the previous
>         numbers free be out of the question?
>       - what open services will be developed?

I don't think that is likely. And the truth is we are still
thinking about other resources we may provide (and/or what will
be "free"). So I can't answer that. But I can tell you that
our subscribers come first. They are helping us pay our bills
and keep jobs where we get to work every day with Zope.

Again, we are happy to give Zope developers, users and designers
another choice. You don't have to become a subscriber. But its
our goal to develop ZopeMag into a service you and everyone
here on this mailinglist would like. 

Our goal has always been to provide new resources to the Zope
community and thereby more choices.


> If the world would be ideal place, I would like to see something like 
> zopemag as a completely open system, or partly paid and for example 
> archive as open content. I feel that magazine like content is really 
> good to tie thing together and get people to find products and other 
> howto's that migth interst them.

We don't have a monopoly on ideas. Everyone is free to create
new resources (commercial and non commercial) for the community.

> Of course my point of view is only about educating people and myself, 
> since I do not make money out of selling Zope-knowledge, even though I 
> make money out of creating services and applications with Zope.

Sorry, don't follow the logic. How is creating services and applications
not another form of selling Zope knowledge?

> Please answer and start discussion about what community could do to 
> support something like zopemag and vice versa. I feel that if made 
> well, something like zopemag could be really good -- like the really 
> active personal zope-portals have sofar been.

If your interested in writing for ZopeMag let us know. 
If you have a good suggestion for a theme or would really like to see
documentation on a particular subject drop us a line at zope-ep@beehive.de

> By the way - the idea of zope in intranet's is really well. I am just 
> finishing my thesis to a polytechnic about building intranet to 
> support implementation of strategy -- and supprise supprise
> as a case example I present an intranet built with Zope and CMF.

We have several authors interested in writing about their
experiences with Zope and CMF -- coming soon in a ZopeMag
near you ! ;-)

Regards,

Mark

--------------------------------------------------------------
mark pratt  (managing director) 	mark@beehive.de
beehive elektronische medien GmbH       http://www.beehive.de
phone: +49 30 847-82 0                  fax: +49 30 847-82 299