Zope Dispatches

Deliverance and Repoze talks at Plone Symposium

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 15:31:28 GMT

Tres and I are going to the Plone Symposium at Penn State this week. I'm giving a talk on Deliverance, aimed at a designer and integrator (versus core developer) audience. Tres is giving a talk on how our Zope2/Plone world matches up to the Python web frameworks world.

Virtual hosting and the ghetto

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 15:28:01 GMT

Chris slays the VHM dragon. The people contributing to Repoze are helping to show the upside of WSGI and the benefits of getting out of our ghetto. Lotta stuff going on in Repoze land these days.

Joel gets insanely great review

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 15:20:13 GMT

I just read a review of Joel Burton's Plone training.

Despite its absurdly low cost, this course was the best open-source training I[base ']ve ever taken, and among the best classes I[base ']ve attended overall. The instructor possesses not only a mastery of the material, but he is also an excellent teacher, with a knack for drawing analogies to real-life experience, and interacting with and captivating the attention of large groups of students. I would not hesitate to recommend this class or others with this instructor. In fact, I would take the same class again, especially since I missed part of the five-day course. In addition, I would certainly be interested in more advanced courses taught by this instructor.

While those sound like strong words, they sound right to me. Joel is, indeed, insanely great at teaching.

Plone-the-product vs. Plone-the-platform, Joel-on-software edition

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 19:10:18 GMT

This week Plone has a summit to discuss strategy. For me, "strategy" means high-level kinds of questions like: - What should Plone do well (vs. not worry about doing well) - Who is it for (vs. not necessarily for) - What makes it unique (vs. what things are commodity) - Who are your natural competitors Using summit time to assess features for future releases is a good idea. But there should also be time to tackle strategy decisions that inform feature planning. I believe Jon is helping make that happen. In trying to help sort out such strategy questions, it's useful to make a distinction between "Plone-the-product" and "Plone-the-platform" (aka the framework). The former is an out-of-the-box application with specific functionality for certain users. That is, a specific user experience. The latter is UI-less set of capabilities from which you can go in various directions to make your own products. And each has a totally different set of answers to the questions above. Stated differently, a totally different "strategy". In trying to bring this up, I get either strong support or strong pushback. The latter goes along the line of "we're both", "why limit ourselves", and foremost, "why does it matter". In this case, Joel Spolsky does a very admirable job discussing platforms.

It's really, really important to figure out if your product is a platform or not, because platforms need to be marketed in a very different way to be successful. That's because a platform needs to appeal to developers first and foremost, not end users.

I just had the good fortune to read an advance copy of Rick Chapman's excellent new book on stupidity in the software industry...One of the biggest themes in software industry failures is a platform vendor that didn't understand that they were a platform vendor, so they alienated their key constituency: the developers.

Over the course of Zope's history, I've watched this issue go through several permutations. The original Zope was a product that tried to hide, of all things, Python. It then grew an extension concept (Products) for developers. The extension part was so popular that Python developers became the core constituency. Zope 3 mostly-abandoned the "product" side, while still sorta implying it would come up with backwards-compatibility to keep those interests in the fold. Instead, Zope 3 was a self-contained application server and platform. And now, having failed to get traction as a self-contained universe, there is a final push to make it assume its most natural place as a system of awesome, high-quality Python components. (See Jens's response on "The Zope Confusion".) I also think Mozilla is an example of not knowing if you're a product or a tool. Three years ago, Mozilla was trying to make the best browser on the planet. Oh, and a great mail client. And a great calendar. And (of all freaking things) chat client. Oh, and it was also a platform of technologies (XUL, etc.) to write extensions for said suite of stuff that went along with said browser. In fact, forget our products entirely...Mozilla is a platform for building *anything*. People got woefully confused. What exactly was Mozilla trying to succeed at? And so Mozilla re-branded: the browser became Firefox, the suite was sent to Siberia, the mail client was spun out, and the chat client was "set free". The word "Mozilla" meant platform. And that still wasn't enough focus. The Mozilla Foundation finally, FINALLY made it clear whether their raison d'etre was to make a killer browser or a generic internet technology. They say that in the ham-and-egg breakfast, the chicken is interested but the pig is committed. MoFoCo said the browser *would* be excellent and the plaform *should* be excellent. Big distinction. Using the word "Plone" to mean both the product and the platform is, IMO, the least attractive way forward. It will never be clear to people what, exactly, Plone is and isn't for. What is it committed to excellence on. Who is its primary audience. And finally, the reason for not choosing product-or-platform will become the ultimate "house divided against itself" outcome: people will think Plone components developed for the Plone framework will only run in Plone. The good news is that Plone already runs on a framework. In fact, several frameworks (Zope 2, CMF, Archetypes, Zope 3.) Anoint one (or help invent one) as that which people should pay attention to, then invest our activities under that flag, and make Plone a gorgeous assembly atop that other framework's genius.

Nice meetup for last night's talk

Wed, 05 Dec 2007 16:28:15 GMT

I gave a talk last night at the ZPUG in DC. In a nutshell, the talk was a gentle introduction to Paste and Deliverance. Basically, I gave the kind of how-to-get-started that I would want to get, as a non-hardcore developer.

Turnout was good, but the atmosphere was even better. Lots of discussions and questions at each step, frequently with the people discussing with each other. There's a lot of interest in the topics of WSGI/eggs/Paste/middleware, and virtualenv/buildout/PyPI, and then how all the relates to particular frameworks like Zope and Plone. My guess is that there is a pent-up demand for something like Repoze, which tries to take all those things people think they should get started on, and make it Just Work in the Zope/Plone world.

People really had some cool angles on how all this could shake out. I really enjoyed the meeting. Thanks to Alex Clark for organizing and Eric Coffman (and TNC) for hosting.

Regarding the material, I spent a bunch of time making progress on how to give a presentation and then have the material ready for good review afterwards. Unfortunately, I still haven't found exactly the process that I'm looking for, but got a lot closer.

Plus, I know a lot more about Paste now. [wink]

Also in Repoze news, Chris and Tres had a talk last night in Chapel Hill, NC and one tonight in Charlotte, NC.

Talking about Deliverance next week in DC

Fri, 30 Nov 2007 19:52:47 GMT

Next week I'm giving a talk in Washington DC on Tuesday, Dec 4 to the Zope/Python Users Group (ZPUG) DC. I'll be talking about Repoze from a middleware perspective. Specifically, I'll talk about using Deliverance to apply a single corporate identity to all Python web applications. I'll also try to give a beginner's guide to using Paste as a quick way to get a sandbox going. If you're interested in Python web technologies, but aren't a guru, this would probably be a decent meeting to attend. Hopefully we can talk a little bit about the people that put user interfaces, navigation, and other non-core-development value into a project, and find out more about how to fit their needs.

New ideas regarding page composition

Wed, 07 Nov 2007 15:52:01 GMT

The prodigious Carlos de la Guardia wrote an intriguing article about Plone Performance and the Future of ZPT. He poses a question in the article: "I wonder if Deliverance could be useful here also?"

Short answer: yes. Longer answer: sorta, and I'd like to find out what people think. So read on, and if you have an interest in alternative thinking on how HTML UIs get generated, ping me.

As background, before I used the word "Deliverance", I was focusing only on Zope Site Themes. I view theming as distinct from skinning. A theme is only about corporate identity. There isn't really any computation, iteration, or any programmer-oriented stuff. Instead, you're just re-arranging HTML. You are probably leveraging existing artifacts.

I then got interested in splitting content management from content delivery and wanted a project that did both theming and composition. And I thought Deliverance was a hilarious name.

I keep vacillating, though, on whether one facility should do both. I still change my mind constantly on this. On one hand, I think they are very distinct audiences (site designers and templating integrators.) In the new, Repoze-oriented world of middleware, that would mean:

A WSGI middleware step takes the CMS output (likely semantic markup) and does "templating" to generate an HTML UI
The next middleware step (Deliverance) takes the mostly-done HTML and applies a corporate ID.

On the other hand, people might want it to be conceptually part of one step. For example, Ian said I should start by using the XSLT version of Deliverance and just having some custom rules that do the first step. It certainly would shave off some performance penalty you'd get by converting a tree to a string and back into a tree between middleware steps.

My instinct says that isolation, though, is better. I'll probably start on that path. (Tres gave me pointers on how to approach it.)

As Alan mentioned in a link from Carlos's article:

Enfold is working on xslt and doing page assembly outside of zope (in apache or IIS) using enfold.lxml (in our public repository).

I worked with Enfold on this for two very large projects, one of which (Open Society Institute's KARL system) was the keynote at the Plone Conference. In this, Plone generates an XML string for the information needed on a page. Something outside Plone takes that and generates a UI.

This has some interesting and positive performance implications. More importantly, it had a big consulting process impact. We were able to model every screen in the system as an XML file on disk. We then refined the UI with the customer, using templates (in our case XSLT) that didn't require a server or framework. Meaning, the customer could hack on it without screwing up "the server".

Since these same templates were used in production, there wasn't really a mockup stage. As long as the "back end" generated the same XML structure our dummy files expected, everything Just Worked.

Forget for a moment whether this uses XML/XSLT or JSON/Genshi or EBCDIC/Cobal. Let's isolate the concept itself (moving HTML UI generation out of the framework) and see if there is interest.

I'd like to discuss using WSGI middleware for page composition and theming to achieve the following goals:

Separate the generation of the information (Plone) from the generation of a custom HTML UI
Increase performance by (insert a few reasons here)
Allow integrators to make more meaningful customizations without learning a component framework
Use schemas to increase quality by bringing a unit-test-like approach to the UI stage

If you're interested, let me know. I can start with a series of screencasts (and yes, Geir, writeups) that try to show what's been done and why it might be worth discussing, if there is interest.

Repoze at ZPUG last night

Wed, 07 Nov 2007 14:52:28 GMT

Last night Chris McDonough gave a presentation to the Zope/Python User Group of Washington, D.C. I went along for the festivities and quite enjoyed myself. Pretty good turnout.

As preparation, Chris wrote a detailed article about getting started with Repoze:

We've just created and released Developing With repoze.zope2 which is a short 10-page PDF that explains the benefits of and differences between developing Zope 2 applications using Repoze and "stock" Zope 2. It might be helpful to folks developing under Plone and CMF.

I believe we're slated to give another talk at the next ZPUG meeting in December. I might give a walkthrough on using Deliverance to theme your Plone site. I'll probably just play my screencast and claim I put effort into preparation. [wink]

We're also interested in getting Repoze more out and into the wild. First, we're talking with Plone/Zope/Python user groups on the east coast, seeing if we can get our travel covered to come give more talks on WSGI and Repoze. If you're interested and can cover our travel, drop us a line.

We also want to get more folks into Repoze, so it's bigger than us. Both people that want to contribute, but also, people that want to start using it for real. Drop by #repoze on irc.freenode.net and hang out with us.

Might we be returning to a One True Zope?

Wed, 07 Nov 2007 14:40:43 GMT

When you say Zope to someone, they may or may not hear the same thing you said. There's Zope 2. There's a completely different thing called Zope 3. There's also a company, but that's a different topic.

It's thus with great relief this morning to read Baiju's At last Zope 3 releases coming to an end ! post. It's somewhat startling, and exciting, to hear this said in public:

I won't be surprised if the term "Zope 3" itself vanish in the future.

I realize there is a small contingent that wants their Zope 3 isolated from Zope 2, never to even touch each other. Honestly, if that was the outcome you wanted, why even call the rewrite Zope in the first place?

Next discussion, hopefully, will be whether that one Zope is an application server or a framework, or some other jargon that doesn't mean "closed world platform". [wink]

Plone events on the horizon

Sun, 28 Oct 2007 17:02:55 GMT

The Plone community manages the selection on its Plone Conference each year as the one big event that brings us together. I believe there is also a sense, though, that we should encourage a number of smaller, regional events as well.

There are two planned that I know about. Mike Halm is planning an event at Penn State University, March 10-15. The event is called "Rally in the Valley: Setting Directions for Higher Education". I believe they're looking to have really good turnout.

Enfold is planning to have its famous Plone Symposium in New Orleans, June 4-6, same venue as last time. Focus is on Plone development and consulting.

Expect announcements on both of these in the coming weeks.

I believe there is also talk about having a Zope/Plone event in Brazil in conjunction with FISL. Anybody else planning anything?

Thanks Pilot Systems for working on Plone.net

Sat, 27 Oct 2007 16:13:54 GMT

Today I spent some time going through the review queue on Plone.net. Current status: 209 providers in 44 countries, 896 sites listed, 23 case studies, and even 20 "in the media" listings. Moreover, the submission rate seems to be picking up.

Which leads to one of the biggest reasons Plone.net is getting traction: Pilot Systems (Plone.net entry). The Plone.net team has a good number of contributors, but Pilot Systems (David Sapiro and Gaël Le Mignot) are the real reasons that sustained energy over time has continued. Not only have the already done a lot, but they'd do even more if Paulie the Lazybutt would pitch in and organize the Trac issues.

Thanks Pilot guys for making Plone.net a success.

Plone on Italian TV

Fri, 26 Oct 2007 20:47:57 GMT

Congrats to the organizers of the Plone Conference 2007 in Naples for making the news on Italian TV.

Repoze: Zope, Reloaded

Fri, 26 Oct 2007 18:45:01 GMT

For the past few weeks, Chris and Tres have been working on Repoze. What is Repoze? As Chris described in his blog post:

I'm looking forward to creating lots of new software in a world where I'm no longer in a (largely self-imposed) Zope "ghetto" and I can share stuff with a larger crowd of people via WSGI components while still retaining the ability to earn money using my specialties.

Tres, in the Zopecast from two weeks ago, said something like: "Repoze gives Zope a good grade on 'Plays Nice With Others'." I'll add my view on the outcome: Repoze lets Plone co-exist with other best-of-breed Python applications in a common environment.

Specifically, here's what Tres and Chris have done:

Zope2 is now a WSGI application. Even more important, they'll (Tres/Chris) make sure it works.
Thus, Plone3 will now run directly inside Apache. Or, with ZServer (which Tres/Chris support as a WSGI server.) Or some other WSGI server. No more managing a separate long-running server process with different management semantics, performance characteristics, and the overhead of an intermediate HTTP call. And...they'll make sure it works. And..they'll make sure it works.
Zope2 is now configured via Ian Bicking's Paste, which is getting more and more traction in the Python web space.
You can install an entire Zope2/WSGI stack using an easy_install command. And...they'll make sure it works.
You can run a Paster-based script to make new instances that all leverage Ian's virtuanenv (virtual Python). And..they'll make sure it works.
Chris and Tres started removing pieces from Zope2's application server and have converted these pieces to WSGI middleware. For example, the Zope transaction manager was factored out of Zope2 and into middleware.
I've been busy making coffee for them.

To show that this cool vision of multiple Python apps working together is real, repoze.org is based on it. All of the following are running inside Apache using mod_wsgi, configured with one Apache conf file:

www.repoze.org takes filesystem STX files and makes HTML pages. It uses repoze.obob which is Bobo converted to WSGI.
bugs.repoze.org uses Roundup for issue tracking.
blog.repoze.org uses pyblosxom for weblog software.
demo.repoze.org/plone/ is a Zope2/Plone site.
Soon we'll have the mail archives woven in usingrepoze.mmwsgi, a WSGI-ification of Mailman that Tres has been working on.

All/most of these have certain things in common:

Running directly in Apache using mod_wsgi
Most are configured using Paste
We are using Deliverance from OpenPlans to apply a common theme across different Python applications. Deliverance is a WSGI middleware approach to themes: the theme is untouched HTML/CSS/JS that has dynamic content merged into it via a separate rule file.

This last part is my particular interest. I made two screencasts:

I suspect I'll be talking more about Deliverance in the coming weeks. If you want to follow Repoze, subscribe to the weblog, join the mailing list, or drop by the IRC channel at irc://irc.freenode.net/#repoze.

So what's next? The first goal was to get everything working enough that they'd be willing to do customer work on it. That goal is now met. Next up, though, is the fun stuff.

Namely, we want to get other folks involved. Folks that have wanted the-Zope-we-have-now to be a first class citizen in Python-land. Folks that like the mix-and-match WSGI vision, bite-sized chunks of middleware, a Zope2 story for eggs. Repoze is already bigger than the 3 of us: while Repoze isn't Agendaless, it's certainly agendaless.

And mostly, Repoze wants to be a fun place. There's room for joy and purpose.

It's fun being back with the dudes

Fri, 26 Oct 2007 14:18:45 GMT

Last year, Chris McDonough, Tres Seaver, and I started Agendaless Consulting. The name came from a weblog post Chris wrote as a follow-on to his really motivating, well-cited Lifestyle Inc. article. Last week we did another Zopecast session and this week Tres started talking about getting out and giving presentations at Zope/Plone user groups.

Not only are these guys incredibly talented consultants (I explained to a former associate how lucky they would be to get two guys that have been around the block and know how the software projects work like Tres and Chris.) But they are also funny as hell, as in "spew beer out through your nose laughing" funny. And most important, they want to do things the right way.

Agendaless ain't an empire-in-waiting. Instead, it's what 3 graybeards want to be doing: working on bigger/harder projects for customers and communities and feeling good about what you do.

Plone Solutions to Jarn: People seem to get it

Fri, 26 Oct 2007 13:49:15 GMT

Janus Boye at CMSWatch today wrote about Plone Solutions' name change to Jarn:

If you're an Alfresco (the tool) integrator, it kind of sucks to compete against Alfresco (the company)...So I think avoiding having a commercial firm by the same name represents an important measure of a true community-oriented project.

Those types of open source CMS projects attract a lot of mainstream attention because they are organized the way tech journalists and analysts understand: central control, shareholder-driven cathedrals. Alfresco is just one example. Last year, when Nuxeo switched from Zope to JBoss, they also also switched the product name from "CPS" (with a .org site) to "Nuxeo 5".

Years ago, when I gave talks about open source business models, I had a slide called "Perfect Distance", whose basic idea went into this book:

Paul Everitt regards this separation as "the perfect distance between the two": if it were too close, Zope would be seen as a shill for Digital Creations; if the connection were more distant, people would suspect Zope of not being viable in the long term.

It's funny reading that section of the chapter, obvious reason notwithstanding. The next paragraph is about Lutris, who was the VC darling back in the early open source days. Enhydra ultimately dissolved into technology as part of the ObjectWeb consortium, if I recall correctly.

There are multiple directions a project/company can take. Each direction has its pros and cons relative to the successful outcome (e.g. exit plan) you want from the effort. But you can't:

Pretend you don't have an agenda (exit plan to make shareholders liquid) when you actually do. People will kind of grok it, even if they don't articulate it that way.
Have both the company and the community. If you really want a community, you have to give them governance, no strings attached. And most companies have exactly the opposite prime directive.

The move by Jarn shows that even the founders of Plone are putting their chips on the table of Door Number One, that Plone really is a community agenda. Jarn's move, plus the trademark conclusion, ices the cake, and Janus' article shows that the market can interpret the tea leaves.