[Zope3-dev] Re: Can we provide a Zope3 Collective?

[Philipp von Weitershausen]

Jim Fulton wrote:

>>> In what way is zope.org not neutral?
>>
>> - Because it is maintained by ZC.
>>
>> (It was only at EP I have heard that ZC is looking for people from the 
>> community to help out. It still hasn't happened, afaik.)
> 
> 1. I don't see how us maintaining it makes it less neutral.
>    Is there any evidence that we are being unfair.

I never said you were unfair, but it isn't exactly a neutral position.

> 2. There are a number of community volunteers who
>    will be taking over increasing amounts of the management
>    of the site.

I'm glad to hear that!

>> - ZC is a competitor in the field.
> 
> And is anyone who might run a collective not a competitor?
> 
> Does this matter? Why?  You seem to be worried about some sort
> of FUD and I can't figure out why. I could understand if we are
> missbehaving. I know you're a good guy and your intention is not
> FUD, bit that's what this is.

My intentions are everything but spreading FUD. ZC is hardly *my* 
competitor, but people have to come me who said that they feel this way 
and that they prefer a [quote] "neutral" place. When you're a small 
company and just for the sake of a central repository have to assign 
half my IP to ZC, a competitor of yours, I think the positions aren't even.

Like Paul suggested, many Open Source communities have solved this 
problem with an indepentend foundation that is decoupled from the 
original company (e.g. Mozilla and Netscape, Plone and Plone 
Solutions/Runyaga LLC). I'm not saying that ZC should do this with Zope, 
but you can't expect people to feel the same way about ZC as they would 
about a neutral place. I think these are issues far from FUD and I'm not 
making them up out of boredom or something.

> There are legitmate issues around license, IP and liability.
> I think they are worth thinking about. There are tradeoffs
> involved. I don't blame someone for not putting software in
> the Zope repository for one of these reasons, at least after
> understanding the tradeoffs. But can we place stop this neutrality
> silliness.  I think it is *really* counter productive and,
> frankly, I find it petty insulting.

I'm sorry, I never meant to insult you, ZC or anybody else. I read from 
your reaction that when I said ZC wasn't "neutral", you must have 
thought of ZC treating the community unfair. That is not the case and 
it's not what I meant! I apologize if my using the concept of neutrality 
was in any way confusing. It might have a connotation in American 
English that I'm not aware of. My statement is about positions and 
images (as Martijn was referring to them), not behaviour or treatment.

[...]

Martijn already made very good points which I'm not going to repeat.

Best regards,

Philipp