[Zope3-dev] Zope 3 branding

[Luciano Ramalho]

On quarta-feira, jan 29, 2003, at 10:18 America/Sao_Paulo, seb bacon 
wrote:

>  - 'Branding' of Zope 3 for the community

This is really critical. I would suggest renaming Zope 3x to Zope 3000, 
to make it clear that it is SciFi.
What we currently call Zope 3 should be called Zope N until N can be 
determined.

Version numbers for current Zope 2 should be incremented, including 
major numbers, to reflect significant new funcionality and to avoid 
transmitting an image of stagnation. (Perhaps Zope 2.7 should be 
released as 3.0 as a clear sign of the new scheme).

When Zope 3000 is mature and the Pope can foresee a release date for a 
backwards compatible version, Zope N should then be renamed to Zope 4, 
5, 6 or whatever number will make it fit after the then current version 
of the Zope 2 codebase.

The Zope 3 transition needs to be better managed from a marketing and 
PR perspective, otherwise customers will run away.

I think this has gotten really out of control after the recent Open 
Letter, in which the first sentence in BOLD TYPE reads "the net effect 
is that people hesitate to commit to Zope 2-based systems."  If some of 
our potential customers were not hesitating, now many will be.

This is followed by an assertion that, taken out of context, is 
disastrous:
  "Zope3 will eventually arrive. That's not the discussion here. But 
when it comes, it will be late. "

All this in a text linked from the top of the main Zope site! Our 
competitors must be really celebrating! (BTW, I agree with most of the 
arguments in the Open Letter, and support using Plone on NZO, but I 
still think the letter is a PR disaster for us).

I think some serious action it the PR field is necessary. Changing the 
version numbering scheme would give us a good opportunity to clarify 
the situation to our current and future customers.

Best regards,

Luciano Ramalho
who bet his company in Zope in 1999

PS. I agree that Zope3-dev is not the right forum for this kind of 
discussion, but I see no other adequate forum at this time.