zope is no longer a monolithic framework, but a large collection of libraries, most of which can used outside the main zope framework or even create your own framework. You can use what you want -- the `pay for what you eat` principle.

Repoze - http://repoze.org and Grok - http://grok.zope.org are some of the derivative frameworks that use best of zope libraries without going the whole hog.

Today, zope (specifically zope3) is arguably ahead of other popular frameworks in terms of its reusability, deployment stories, extensive testing.

Combine WSGI + Paste + Zope Component architecture + SQLAlchemy and a choice of other libraries to create a robust framework of your own.