Zope effective user support

  Zope can bind its network service to low ports such as 21 (FTP) and
  80 (HTTP).  In order to bind to low ports, Zope must be started as
  the root user.  However, Zope will only run as root long enough to
  bind to these low ports.  It will then attempt to setuid to a less
  privileged user.

  You must specify the user to which Zope will attempt to setuid by
  changing the 'effective-user' parameter in the zope.conf
  configuration file to an existing username or UID.  All runtime
  files will be written as this user.  If you do not specify an
  'effective-user' in the configuration file, and you attempt to start
  Zope, it will refuse to start.

  Zope additionally emits a warning if you specify 'nobody' as the
  'effective-user'.  The rationale for this warning stems from the
  fact that, historically, many other UNIX services dropped privileges
  to the 'nobody' account after starting as root.  Any security
  defects in these services could cause someone to gain access as the
  'nobody' account on your system.  If someone was to gain control of
  your 'nobody' account they could compromise your Zope files.

  The most important thing to remember about effective user support is
  that you don't have to start Zope as root unless you want to listen
  for requests on low ports (ports beneath 1024).  In fact, if you
  don't have this need, you are much better off just starting Zope
  under a dedicated user account.