zope's acquisition inheritance

[Wostenberg]

This Smalltalker has been studying Zope, the Opensourced python product
for internet deployment (see http://www.zope.org), to learn.

It has an unusual model of interitance called acquisition, which blends
class heiarchy with containment. Read
http://www.zope.org/Members/Amos/WhatIsAcquisition for introduction.
Basically "objects automatically gather. services from their
containers.". Everything is potentially a collector-class, and if I drop
objects into a collection, they inherit behavior from the container.
Weird, but somehow natural in this Web environment which organises
content around a tree-structured containment plan.

Anybody heard of acquisition outside Zope, or is it a new contribution
to OO modelling?
-Alan