I'm in the process of moving plone.syndication.outbound to
vice.outbound and plone.app.syndication.outbound to
vice.plone.outbound. I am doing this work in a branch:

https://svn.plone.org/svn/collective/Vice/branches/derek-namespace-rename

The upside is that this removes the need to move these two packages
into the plone repository to release eggs. Moving to the plone
repository from the collective would limit participation. I don't want
to do that.

wicked has already proven that you can live outside the plone
namespace, keep code in the collective, and still be in core. So I
don't see wanting to be in core as a downside. Plus, in these days of
eggs and buildout, the arguments in favor of being in an already
bloated plone core are less compelling.

The real downside is backwards compatibility. I am committed to having
a migration from the old packages to the new because I have a site in
production using the old packages. I am also committed to migrating
quills.syndication, as I use that, as well. And I have some
proprietary packages to migrate, not that you care. ;)

I am hoping to have back-compat done by Sunday. Sunday is when I will
release. I will either release the old packages as alpha4, or the new
ones as either alpha1 or beta1, or both, depending on how things go.
If released, the new packages will be on pypi and plone.org, in
addition to svn.

The new packages will move out of vice. The vice all-inclusive folder
in the collective is an idea whose time has passed. The packages will
now live under their own package names in the collective root.

I will leave README files in the vice folder to point to the new
locations. I will leave the inbound packages in the vice folder for
lizz-y to do with as she wishes.

I am curious to know who is using Vice already, especially in
production. I hope they all bothered to subscribe to this list. ;) If
there are few, I may not put the back-compat code in the codebase, but
instead make it available separately. I am unsure of the legal
ramifications of the back-compat I'll have to do to the plone
namespace and would prefer not to pollute the new packages. In fact, I
may not put it in the collective at all, but only make an example
available on my blog. It depends on where my head is on Sunday or
whenever back-compat is done.

So, if you are using vice and care about back-compat, let me know!
Also, if you have any qualms with my goal or my means of reaching it,
please let me know those, too.

The ultimate goal is to release a beta that is 1.0-feature-complete by
the time plone 3.1-final is released. This is a stretch goal, but it's
the goal. I won't be able to reorg packages after beta is announced,
so this needs to be right, right now.

Feel free to drop by #vice this weekend. I won't be there all the time
(though my machine probably will be ;) ), but I'll be there a good
deal and I'd love to chat or even accept some offers to help. The
package rename is big, but it's not the only thing that needs to be
done before beta - there are several smaller tasks that I'd like a
hand with, if anyone can spare a hand on such short notice.

Wish me luck!

Derek