Zope is the Z Object Publishing Environment, the highly regarded open-source object-oriented web application framework written in python. It was once the commercial product called Principia, which arose from BoBo. JimFulton and DigitalCreations (now Zope Corporation) are the wizards behind this, and now also the large and very busy zope community.
Wikipedia has the most up-to-date Zope overview: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zope
At zope.org, we have What is Zope, An Introduction to Zope and Zope Architecture.
The Zope Book includes Introducing Zope and Zope Concepts and Architecture chapters.
Here is a timeline for the Zope project.
"Professional Web content systems companies, switching to Open Source - as recommended by their own venture capitalist? That's sick. ZOPE is a PERVERTED hybrid of the widely-regarded BOBO object-oriented CGI replacement, and the previously commercial PRINCIPIA Web application system. It's also got the Aqueduct relational database system thrown in. It's all free, source code is included, and even more horrifically, it's centered on the PYTHON language, that politically-correct, nicely-formatted, easy-to-read OPEN BLOODY SOURCE scripting language. ZOPE's creators will be releasing the source later today, so we haven't had a chance to play, but we hope it's bloody rubbish, otherwise we'll have nothing nasty to say at all. http://www.zope.org/
nice clean well-written Website too. CURSE THEM!"
Need To Know (1998)
As of 2008, there are two major versions of Zope in use. See Zope 2 or Zope 3 ?