Re: Zope3 name

On Tuesday, Feb 11, 2003, at 11:07 Europe/Paris, seb bacon wrote:

> There has been a discussion about naming Zope3, which I would like to 
> revive.
>
> First (and what got me thinking about it again): was it appropriate to 
> call the pre-New-Year-release  an 'alpha'?  On the one hand, I know 
> Jim is keen to keep up the momentum among developers.  On the other, 
> it suggests (to me) a level of maturity which the product has not yet 
> reached, which could damage perceptions from the outside.

I had a couple of business people, e.g. folks in the government, ask me 
such questions last week at the conference.  I'm sure my responses gave 
the impression of some rather tortured tap dancing.

> OK, I would be happy deploying a Zope3 app *now* for a company which 
> was willing to pay a fair amount for ongoing support.

Even with the "We just refactored, please delete your Data.fs" 
instructions? :^)

> But a number of central parts of the application are either incomplete 
> or not yet fixed - for example, APIs, the interfaces implementation, 
> the GUI, software packaging, a full catalog implementation.

Right.  But as Jim and Tres have pointed out, the DZUG sprint will 
shine some light on these issues.  Hopefully in 5 weeks we'll have a 
better sense of things.

> One reasonable solution to the perception problem still appears to be 
> to change the name of Zope 3 now before it is too late.
>
> Reasons:
>
>  - It is entirely unclear that Zope3.0 will be ready before such a time
>    that Zope 2.x runs out of minor version numbers and perhaps
>    undergoes some major changes itself (what about the proposed
>    back-ports of new Z3 functionality?)

I think we have to give up on discussions of backporting.  There's 
simply little interest amongst the core team for such an approach.  
It's a shame, because I think history has proven that such an approach 
(forward or backwards) is Exhibition Number One in a transition 
strategy. :^(

Regarding 2.x, one part I'm not clear on is the status of 2.x.  Based 
on the ZC official stance, 2.x is not being "terminated", meaning, 
applications will still be supported and new projects initiated.

However, is 2.x "end-of-lifed"?  Meaning, will new features be added?  
Jim hinted that he doesn't think this is a good idea, which I think 
puts Zope 2.x in EOL status.  (Note: when used in the industry, this 
piece of jargon can still mean that a product lives for many years.)

>  - Zope3 will be so different for developers from 2.7, it seems
>    confusing to make it sound like a major point change when it's
>    actually a complete rewrite.  People will go out and buy the "Zope
>    Book" and find it completely irrelevant.  I would prefer Zope 3000 
> or
>    Zope Component Server, for example.

Ouch.  I hadn't thought of the issue about the books.

>  - It is increasingly clear to me that ZC and/or the community must 
> work
>    out very long-term support and development arrangements for 2.x to
>    keep existing customers happy.  Having 3.0 suggests a replacement of
>    2.7 to nervous users.  Why not have a name which does not apparently
>    preclude parallel development?

I think this is a reasonable suggestion and has precedent in the 
industry.

It's hard to find many examples where such a radical change (complete 
rewrite, completely new API, new database format, old API not 
supported, etc.) was attempted.  Still, we can look at a few cases 
where some of those ingredients were attempted.

When MS moved to NT, the new product name (Windows NT) shared the 
platform name (Windows) but added a distinctive qualifier (NT).  
However, the API largely remained the same (Win32).

When Apple moved to a new OS, they also added a qualifier to the 
product name (OS X).  Apple, though, chose the route of providing a 
forward-compatible API (Carbon).  They also provided a compatibility 
box.

When Apache moved to Apache 2, it wasn't a complete rewrite, but was 
probably a substantial rewrite.  However, as far as I know, the old API 
is mostly supported.  They simply called it Apache 2, the next version 
of Apache.

Any other examples?

> I know this will be a very unpopular move among Z3 developers, but I 
> would like to have the opportunity to argue the point in detail before 
> I give up on it!

It seems like a valid argument.  I agree that calling it Zope 3 will 
give a false impression to people that have already invested in the 
Zope world.

IMO, Zope 3 is being positioned as appealing to people that want to 
start over in Zope, not really for people that want to preserve their 
investment.  I believe the position on the latter group is: "Stick with 
Zope 2".

--Paul