What could justify the complexity of Plone?

Question

Plone is very complex. Zope2, Zope3, Five, ZCML, ZODB, ZEO, a whole bunch of acronyms and abbreviations.

It's hard to begin and the current state seems to be undecided. It is mainly based on Zope2, but incorporates Zope3 via Five. And there are XML config files everywhere.

Does the steep learning curve pay of? Is this complexity still justified today?

Background: I need a platform. Customers often need a CMS. I'm currently reading "Professional Plone Development", without prior knowledge of Plone.

The problem: Customers don't always want the same and you can't know beforehand. One thing is sure: They don't want the default theme of Plone. But any additional feature is a risk. You can't just start and say "If you want to see the complexity of Plone, you have to ask for it." when you don't know the system good enough to plan.

Answer 1

From a system administrator standpoint, Plone is just shy of being the absolute devil. Upgrading, maintaining, and installing where you want to install things is all more painful than necessary on the Linux platform. That's just my two cents though, and why I typically prefer to avoid the Zope/Plone stack.

Note: it's better with newer releases, but older releases.... ugh