“…One of the most noteworthy things about the open-source
world is that no good idea is ever wasted; if it doesn’t succeed
the first time around, it’s generally recycled through a few
iterations until a wider audience is reached.”
“Such is the case with Python and Zope. Python has a devoted
user base; while this base may not be as large as the user base
associated with Java or Perl or Tcl, it’s still significant enough
to warrant serious consideration in discussions of scripting and
programming languages. That’s because at its core there are a lot
of good ideas within Python about how data should be handled in an
object-oriented fashion.”
“These good ideas are given more exposure and a fuller
development in Zope, an open-source application server developed by
Digital Creations. Zope is positioned in several different ways by
its developers. First, Zope is positioned as direct competition to
application servers like Cold Fusion and SilverStream, which take
user-friendly queries from Web browsers via Java applications,
submit them to relational database, format the returned data, and
then send the information back to the Web browser. (This, of
course, is a gross simplification of what an application server
does, but it gives you a general idea, nevertheless.) Secondly,
Zope is positioned as an open-source development system against the
likes of mod_perl and PHP. Finally, Zope is positioned as a
content-management system and portal manager, competing against
Glyphica, Portera, and Vignette.“