[Plone-conference] Openspace: growing plone | as a brand

[Chris Calloway]

On 10/23/2014 10:26 PM, Jean Jordaan wrote:
> I think all long-time Plone collaborators value the community as one of the
> really good things about it. But it's not about being visionary or sheer fun.
> It's also about being a humane, welcoming place without a lot of bullying.
>
> People aren't just slinging code, they're building a commons that allows
> them to make a living in a good way: that includes meeting for sprints all
> over the world, working together because of mutual respect and shared values,
> learning from different cultures, contributing at their level of comfort or
> expertise.

++1. There are so many good things about Plone. This is just one. But 
it's one that makes me care more about Plone.

Not in response to Jean, who I seem to agree with, but in general I knew 
I would not be able to dance enough to keep my last post from being 
somewhat seen as consultant bashing. It was part of my hesitation. And 
it's evidence of the entrenchment of a culture in that if you bring up 
the elephant in the room, you are offending it. I'm not against 
consultants. I'm against consultantware and the thinking that it's ok 
and should be embraced. Consultantware is the root of the idea that, 
"Plone is not the perfect choice for someone about to build a new site 
because it requires a programmer or consultant. That's what we're 
talking about when we say consultantware. And I'm certainly going to be 
taking to Dylan in Bristol to see how he does it without programming or 
consulting. I also have seen a lot of improvements in Plone that are 
true to the original Plone vision of pushing things up into Plone setup 
where non-programmers can deal with them  and that give me hope that 
consultants get it like TTW content type editors, theme rule editors, 
and form editors.

Also, Medusa is not a problem. The reason it has been in maintenance 
since before Plone is that it is bulletproof. It only needs replacing it 
you are sliding in something dependent on WSGI in order to solve 
problems above the Medusa layer. Medusa is just a web server. CMS 
problems start more at the OFS layer and up. However, "show me the 
code," is a perfectly reasonable response to this thread and criticisms 
of consultantware. I think what has been talked about isn't so much 
piecemeal replacement from the bottom up, but a factoring such that 
there is a layer of separation between Plone and Zope that could be 
otherwise filled. But maybe that is the wrong approach and starting at 
the bottom is the right thing. Maybe the Zope to Plone layer is too far 
up the stack and interdependent to realistically refactor. It would then 
be a informative experiment to try replacement from the very bottom. 
There was once a Plone minor version that replaced Medusa with Twisted's 
server and that was soon backed out.

-- 
Sincerely,

Chris Calloway, Applications Analyst
UNC Renaissance Computing Institute
100 Europa Drive, Suite 540, Chapel Hill, NC 27517
(919) 599-3530