My vision of a TYPO3 Marketplace

In the last few days there has been a discussion on Forge and Facebook about the topic of a marketplace for TYPO3. A marketplace was briefly outlined in the Scenario Paper for the future of the TYPO3 Association. I can now see that many people have little concrete idea of a marketplace and rightly fear that TYPO3 will no longer be available as FOSS in the future. I choose this space to outline my personal view of a possible marketplace.

(Reading time: 5 minutes – English version)

What is the Marketplace?

I understand the concept of the marketplace in the best sense of the word. Basically, it should be a (digital) place where supply and demand meet. This is deliberately not limited to the extensions, but for me all offers and requests can be processed via it. These offers do not necessarily have to be compensated with money. On the contrary, it should be up to the provider to decide whether an offer is to be remunerated or not. At the same time, it should be possible for the requesters to obtain offers free of charge. So much for the theory. What can this look like? In my opinion, the marketplace should cover the following areas:

Extensions

The much-discussed topic at the moment. For me, there should be two different types of extensions in the future. On the one hand, there are the ones we have so far, freely available and of varying quality and documentation. But then there should also be extensions that are “approved” by the TYPO3 Association. The T3A ensures that the documentation is sufficient, that the quality is good, etc. Providers who want to create such extensions (or extension framesets) must therefore fulfill a number of conditions and can charge an annual support fee for the continued maintenance of the extensions. The amount of the fee for the extension can be freely chosen by the provider; the Association takes around 30% of the turnover for its services. Part of this money is used for quality assurance and the operation of the Marketplace, the rest goes into the Association’s coffers and is spent there on further support for TYPO3. Such a system has the following advantages:

1. The end customer benefits from more favorable functionality because extensions can be used 1:1, as they are designed to be more comprehensive if they are developed with a view to later more universal use.
2. The manufacturers of good extensions have a financial motivation to share them with others, today it is the case that the agencies have various very good extensions, but these are not in the TER (and are not shared).
3. No license is sold (which would not be possible). The extensions themselves are still free. However, the provider is of course free to charge higher prices than the maintenance costs in order to amortize his initial investment.
4. We enable agencies to act as “product-only companies” by only programming extensions and not realizing customer projects. In practice, we will probably see a hybrid form.
5. TYPO3 benefits as a system because it can offer much more good functionality and this can also be promoted accordingly by the marketing team.
6. The existing extension ecosystem will not be changed. Anyone who wants to and can should share as many extensions as possible in the highest possible quality and with the highest possible configurability. (If this already worked perfectly today, we wouldn’t need a marketplace for extensions).

TYPO3 Jobs

TYPO3 jobs are another interesting field. It can only be in the interest of the TYPO3 community that job seekers and job providers find each other quickly (btw, of course not only dev jobs). Here, too, it should be possible to post jobs free of charge. However, it should also be possible to make certain job postings more prominent. These would then cost a corresponding amount. If agencies spend money on job postings, then it should be with the TYPO3 Association. This money would then also benefit TYPO3.

TYPO3 Crowdfunding

I have a similar view of crowdfunding. We should provide a corresponding functionality that enables TYPO3 community members to finance various TYPO3 projects (or extensions, for example) by means of crowdfunding. The TYPO3 Association would charge standard fees, which would then be made available to the TYPO3 project.

TYPO3 B2B

Many freelancers, but also small and medium-sized agencies, work almost exclusively for other TYPO3 agencies. They receive these orders in order to strengthen their know-how in a certain area or to break workload peaks. It is conceivable that the TYPO3 Association could provide an area where specific requests and offers can be brought together. Whether a financial component could also come into play here, I cannot judge at the moment. But it is clear that it should be as easy as possible for all agencies interested in TYPO3 to get professional help. By this I don’t necessarily mean “TYPO3 agencies”, but Internet agencies that are asked by customers to implement a project with TYPO3. It can only help the TYPO3 community if more people and companies are involved in TYPO3.

TYPO3 Themes

Themeing is particularly interesting for small projects. Personally, I’m not a fan of “TYPO3 themes” at all, because I think that the positioning of the products is promoted in the direction of small projects (as WP, for example, impressively demonstrates). Nevertheless, I have to recognize that it would probably make sense for many people in the community. In addition, there would probably soon be TYPO3 versions of the well-known successful WP/Drupal/Joomla themes and thus open further doors for our systems.

TYPO3 Education

I like what is currently being driven forward in the education sector and I can well imagine that the various offers, whether they come from the Assoc or from private companies, will be offered and processed via the Marketplace.

Further ideas

For now, there are no limits to further ideas. I think it is always interesting to use the Marketplace if the following things can be achieved.

1. Make access to things easier for the TYPO3 community (specifically “easy” like only having to search in one place).
2. To accelerate the exchange of ideas, deliverables, etc., whether paid for or not.
3. Costs that would be incurred externally (e.g. when using an external crowdfunding platform or an external job exchange) flow to the TYPO3 Association. These funds will then be used for the benefit of TYPO3.

Why this marketplace?

I think there are many reasons for this. One important reason is that I think a lot more needs to be shared, especially in the code area. I don’t care whether it’s paid or unpaid – the main thing is that it happens.

Over the last few years, I have had the opportunity to look inside various agencies and I think many of them are not aware of how much good functionality is not shared. In addition, the vast majority of agencies only use a fraction of the extensions available in TER, simply because they are not sufficiently implemented and/or not universally applicable and therefore have to be thoroughly revised before they can be used in the project. Many developers rightly say to themselves, well, if we’re going to do it, then let’s rebuild this functionality precisely tailored to the customer. As a result, hundreds of new extensions are created every year that never see TER and in some cases can do exactly the same thing. A resource-related madness that has absolutely nothing to do with “Inspire to Share”.

To all those who are now questioning the ideological roots of TYPO3, I can only say that I understand these concerns. On the other hand, I am also a little surprised that we see our culture in serious danger just because we would change a business model. A business model can never be culture and vice versa. You can maintain a culture that is shaped by ideology over decades, but not a business model. We would do well not to confuse the one with the other, because the environment is not the same as it was in 2002 and open source is no longer what it used to be.

The other important reason for me is that we simply have to find an additional revenue stream for the TYPO3 Association. It’s sad: in an ecosystem that has a turnover of around 400 million EUR, there is just under 700k EUR in the Association’s annual budget. There may be many reasons for this and they are certainly justified. However, if we want our products to be successful on the market, we simply have to invest a lot more resources in marketing, events and product improvements (code and non-code).

I would like to briefly clarify once again that the above comments are my personal opinion. I was heavily involved in the strategy process and, if a change scenario is adopted at the GA, I will probably help with the preparations. I will probably no longer be involved in the actual implementation.