I've spent the past hour trying to find something which is a real competitor to Zope. It sure was difficult. Anyway, I've written a few thoughts down for you to have a look at. There is some good information out there, and a couple of products which didn't exist when we started the eaSOL project. Still Zope is the clear winner. Anyway, I thought I'd post this on the Lawtec website for posterity (and so I don't have to rewrite all this again).

ARTICLES ON ONLINE COURSE DELIVERY

Number One

This should provide some good reference materials particularly with regard to WebCT and Blackboard price concerns. They are plugging a product which I've considered as an alternative below... The website in general is also full of good articles on educational technology.

Number Two

This article may have bits which are useful for you. It ends up recommending Blackboard, but doesn't even talk about open source alternatives at all. The best thing about this article is that it sets out the buy, build, combo option and sets the stage nicely for some of the things that I think make.

OPEN SOURCE ALTERNATIVES TO ZOPE

Bazaar

Bazaar is typical of many open source offerings in the Open Source arena. It was written by the University of Athabasca.

The first problem is customisation. It is doubtful whether Bazaar in its out-of-the-box setup is exactly what the University of Athabasca require. I doubt that it would be exactly what USP require. I had a look at the demonstration. Once you start to customise these things, it can get tricky. Unlike Zope, this product is not developed within a scalable framework. You would have to reverse engineer it first, and there is no guarantee that if you start altering it, you won't break something unexpected. The Zope approach, which keeps developers away from the core of the product, thus retaining a secure, reliable framework is nowhere to be found.

The second problem (wrt Zope) is scalability. Zope is proven to work well for thousands of users. The scale to which Bazaar has been tested is not known.

Thirdly, there are no features allowing the level of integration similar to Zope (see below).

Midgard

It is probably the closest thing out there to Zope in many ways. It is a content management framework written in PHP (instead of python). Its primary focus seems to be the management of content for a website. That is, it fulfils the course materials requirement. And this is fairly typical of the other content management systems and frameworks out there.

What you don't get is the discussion forum, the online chat groups, the integration with other systems that Zope is good for. The scope of their efforts does not encompass the education sector. This is made apparent by the lack of any Universities in the Midgard-powered sites section.

Furthermore, I do not believe that the level of integration between systems is available to the same degree as with Zope (again see below).

WHY ZOPE?

1. Zope is more than just a Content Management System.

   It is more than a course delivery product. Zope is a web application development which can be used for more than just course delivery. It can and has been used for a wide range of sites, including a number of Universities.

2. Zope is a scalable, reliable technology

   Zope is scalable to thousands of users. For example the NATO website, etc.

3. Accessible, active developer community

   Through public mailing lists and irc chat channels, it is easy to get in contact with other Zope developers, including the developers at Zope corporation. This results in a high degree of information sharing, and rapid response to software bugs.

4. Ease of integration with existing software on both the server and the client.

   Client software such as Dreamweaver, FrontPage (or whatever) can be used to author content, through FTP, WebDAV, or the Zope External Editor product. This drastically reduces the learning curve for staff members responsible for content creation. And of course you can use it with Flash, Java applets without any difficulty.

   Zope is multiplatform and runs on all flavours of Windows and UNIX. This means reduced costs for implementation.

   Zope has long integrated with most popular databases such as Oracle, SQL Server, PostgreSQL (and in fact any ODBC data source). Zope Products have been written which enable integration with Perl and PHP (popular web scripting languages). This means that Zope can provide a common point of access for the many disparate systems in place at the University. For example, a web front end could be written for the Banner system providing a one-stop shop for staff and students.

   The advantage of this level of integration means that Zope can provide vendor neutrality. Sick of paying for Windows to run the Zope server on? Install Linux, then install Zope on that. The users will never notice anything different. Decide to change the student administration system, you keep the Zope front-end that everyone is used to, and rewrite the link to the back end.

   Quote from the Zope Corp website:

   "I have been working with Internet technology and it's challenges since 1989 and our most difficult task is to quickly convert legacy applications and data into a web based application. The best example of this legacy application was the Navy's Engineering Change Proposal Application. An automated tool was supposed to streamline a very common business task. Many contractors and application developers have attempted to automate this process and have failed. We turned to the development product ZOPE and have completely rewritten the meaning of legacy conversions. The ECP application was developed under ZOPE and accepted after an extensive competitive development process."

   --James Glenn, Internet Branch Head Code J561, Space and Electronic Warfare Command, System Support Center Charleston,U.S. Navy Internet Manager

5. Zope is written in Python

   Python is a programming language which is good for teaching the fundamentals of computer science. Computer Science courses could (and may already teach Python). Thus the further development of a course delivery system based on Zope could come from student projects undertaken by CompSci students.