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Zope Foundation IRC Chat

I participated in a chat today. The chat was on the topic of the formation of a Zope Foundation.

A transcript of the chat is here

Rob Page of ZC sent out an announcement regarding ZC's desire to create a Zope Foundation a while back . He also bootstrapped today's chat by creating a strawman draft overview of bylaws . The Foundation is meant to "empower the Zope community", or something like that anyway.

I think the chat went very well. I was worried about the Foundation being a little too vendor-centric with the idea that it would be modeled after the Eclipse Foundation which has its board of directors heavily stacked in favor of large member corporations, but it turns out that Rob took most of the best parts of the Eclipse Foundation bylaws ("vendor-friendliness", paid memberships and so forth) and some of the best parts of the Apache Software Foundation's bylaws (merit-based power) and came up with something pretty good. Most impressive to me was ZC's willingness to have parity between the number of "cash" members of the foundation vs. the number of "blood" members of the foundation.

To me, anyway, the hurdles now to getting a Foundation off the ground are actually pretty moderate. I have a few specific gripes that I predict will need to be addressed for the Foundation to be maximally successful:

  • Rob's overview of the bylaws stipulates that the bylaws can only be changed by a unanimous vote of the board of directors. This essentially means every board director has veto power. Probably not very conducive to being able to change something that will almost certainly be wrong on first draft. Granting any director veto power to maintain a status quo could make the point of the Foundation effort somewhat moot.
  • ZC is willing to asssign the foundation a "limited, worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable license of the Zope marks" for purposes of releasing software. I'm not sure I understand what ZC has to gain by not granting ownership of the marks outright to the Foundation, provided that the Foundation reverse-granted them the same sort of irrevocable license. It would certainly make it more attractive if I were a Strategic Developer Company (who pays dues into the Foundation) to know that I might have some influence over who could use the word "Zope" and how, given that I would presumably be putting marketing dollars into promoting Zope via the Foundation.

Rob was either mum or held firm on both points as they were raised during the chat. But apparently more discussion about the Foundation is going to happen at EuroPython soon.

Created by chrism
Last modified 2005-06-21 11:50 AM

project booting process

Posted by jhauser at 2005-06-21 12:05 PM
Besides the raised points another deferred to later question, was the process of bootstrapping new projects in the Zope Foundation. It was cleared, that once a project is there, it will mainly be managed by the active developers, but there needs to be process to bring new interesting, community supporting projects up and then decide which ones can be done under the umbrella of the Zope Foundation. Currently the projects like Zope2, Zope3, ZODB and CMF a rather big projects, but the general tendency seems to be for smaller, more independant subprojects, at least in the Z3 component framework. I think this will also be discussed at the Europython conference, where many of the involved people are present.

Nice chat and a constructive suggestion on rate structure

Posted by zopepaul at 2005-06-22 01:59 AM

I agree with your analysis, the chat went very well and Rob quite obviously spent a bunch of time preparing beforehand, to make sure things went more smoothly than you'd normally expect in an IRC appointment. Thanks, Rob, for spending the extra time and well done juggling the conversation.

On the trademark stuff, in one segment things are certainly improved. Software assets managed by the Foundation are more in the clear, likely by a long shot, than they were before. For these assets, it is a certain improvement. Some previous concerns with the trademark, though, are unresolved.

On a different point, I'd like to know more about the philosophy behind the rate schedule. Were the amounts chosen to maximize ZF income? To ensure deep commitment by SDs, since they get equal power via money not code? To set a natural cap on the number of seats?

I'll start with a premise regarding the groupings behind the creators of Zope software.

1) Individual developers.

2) Small businesses. Like, very small, under 30.

3) Large businesses.

My guess is that Zope is Zope because of 1 and 2. Zope will resume its momentum based first on 1 and 2. I don't really see very many of 3 that are on the horizon.

Given the rate structure, I think it is unlikely that many of 1 or 2 will pay for the Strategic seats. Most of these companies have trouble making payroll at some point during the year. Asking them to pay a foundation, when they struggle to pay employees, might not be realistic. IMO, 1 and 2 wind up in the same voting block. Thus, IMO, 95% of the existing strength splits 50% of the voice.

If we revisited the rates, we could better tap into the existing strengths of Zope. I don't think it is about revenue for the Foundation. In fact, a change could
increase revenue by increasing sharply the participation.

Anyway, that's my constructive suggestion for the chat.