[Plone-conference] Openspace: growing plone

[Peter Jacobs]

I think this discussion touches only one aspect of the issue how to revive Plone: the free-market economics thinking, positioning  yourself in the market with your product etc… That is very important of course, as people need to live and eat in a harsh and competitive economic climate.

But (and I have only heard and read about this, as I wasn’t involved in Plone before 2008) Plone was started by bright minds as a visionary project, experimenting and tinkering with ideas that still stand the test of time. That must have been a time when many many people worked on Plone out of internal motivation and for the sheer fun of it.

Unfortunately what is left at this time is a big pile of excellent but rapidly aging code (mainly in zope I suspect), that doesn’t invite people to play and experiment as much as before.
If that could be solved in some way, programmers/integrators/tinkerers could use this system again for whatever purpose they like: being it a large enterprise site, a small high-end experimental webapp, a backend webservice, …

Peter

Van: Plone-conference [mailto:plone-conference-bounces at lists.plone.org] Namens Steve McMahon
Verzonden: dinsdag 21 oktober 2014 2:07
Aan: Plone-conference at lists.plone.org
Onderwerp: Re: [Plone-conference] Openspace: growing plone

Based on Chris' and Harito's replies, I obviously made my point poorly. My main argument was against using a metric (installed base) that could lead us into trying to compete in a saturated market. (I was also trying to point out that the metric Dylan proposed assumed its conclusion.) The questions and points that Harito, in particular, made are all much more interesting and potentially productive.

Evolutionary success comes from adapting to succeed in a niche. It also comes from adapting to changing circumstances. When Plone was new, it was not just AN open-source CMS, it was THE open-source CMS. People used it for everything. The CMS market is now highly differentiated, and the surest recipe for failure would be to try to chase our old 100% market share.

What are we good at? What can we be better at? What can we be better at than others? While maintaining a community model? For the answers to those sorts of questions, I'd look to efforts like the new Intranet Consortium. That's exciting, and an example of great community leadership.


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