Would have been just as easy using an NNTP server for the backend. My estimate is that adding NNTP synchronization will take about 4 hours, and I intend on doing so after I get a few other things out of the way. I definitely went with the more complex solution. I don't think this validates your point at all.

The code will be perusable after v. 0.3, as I'm doing a lot of rearchitecting (extreme programming and all that... do the simplest thing that works :-).

Once I get everything prototyped (yes, this is a prototype) I'll port it to something else, like Webware. Zope is good for prototyping, but not for a full-scale project. There are too many things to work around, just like Visual Basic.