[TYPO3-english] TYPO3 6.0 at the corner? How is it possible

[Boris Hinzer]

On 2012-03-08 21:24:20 +0000, François Suter said:

> Hi Boris,
> 
>> IMHO the product board would be a good step ahead in the rigtht
>> directions, but it's missing a mandatory component - the view from the
>> other side.
> 
> There's the idea of having a community council, which was still 
> mentioned in the early versions of the Product Board's draft. This was 
> removed in later versions in order to proceed step by step and not rush 
> everything at the same time. But Ben van t' Ende, our community 
> manager, is actively working on the topic.
> 
>> This could / should lead to the situation that planned developments
>> aren't build just because of developers choice (because it's hip or
>> feels doing it would be nice to have).
>> Once features / features requests are accepted, the product board AND by
>> the expert group could make a targetting request to show if there really
>> is a need for this certain feature.
>> 
>> Additonally these features could get crowd funded, by publishing the
>> accepted feature(s) to all T3A members and using a global plattform like
>> kickstarter.
>> This would lead to another option to show even people which are not
>> directy connected to TYPO3 that there is a CMS with enterprise features,
>> where they can participate even with money against features.
> 
> This is certainly an interesting idea, but it may not be so easy to 
> achieve. In 2008 I was asked if I wanted to be the "Sponsoring Manager" 
> for TYPO3. The idea was that developers could submit projects (rather 
> large ones), with detailed descriptions, and companies could apply to 
> sponsor these projects if they felt they suited their needs. As I'm no 
> marketing guy but still versed in communication, my role was to help 
> developers formulate their projects in a clear way and the hope was 
> that funds would just roll in (I was not meant to do active 
> fund-raising, which would have required a wholly different profile).
> 
> Two different things happened: out of three proposed projects, two 
> gathered nothing or next to nothing. Apparently they had not enough 
> business interest, which in a way is fine and certainly shows a process 
> somewhat akin to what you describe above (if the feature is not 
> interesting, it's not supported and thus not implemented).

Yes I've noticed these projects and can remember at least one or two 
projects which appeared somewhere on a subpage at typo3.org. IMHO very 
underrepresenteted. Additionally I can't remember that during the last 
2-3 years I've got some sort of feature request nor a project call for 
bids via email from the T3A.

> 
> The third one was the new FORM project. This one actually had most of 
> its funding even before it was announced and the rest of the budget 
> could be collected. The problem is that collecting money is not enough. 
> Even though the project came from a developer (Patrick Broens) who - 
> obviously - was perfectly willing to work on it, nobody else was. 
> Patrick was left alone to do the project. Quite predictably this led to 
> some (large) periods of latency where Patrick was busy with other stuff 
> and quite a bit of demotivation too. The end result was that it took 
> much longer to complete the project than expected.

IMHO there are two ways of supporting such a project - either by 
helping to develop or trying to help at least with money.
If we don't have the ability or the capacity to develop, we could at 
least send some money which is dedicated to the project.

Olivier and Ingo are doing this very well with theit TYPO3 Solr 
project. As I've seen their approach and noticed the TYPO3 caretaker 
project on T3CON10 my idea was that I get in touch with the caretaker 
guy and we sent them 500 EUR to support their project. Also as we've 
noticed that a first project could benefit from the TYPO3 Solr, we 
became their sponsors.

I guess this approach is not for everybody, as I've seen lots of 
agencies which just take TYPO3, use it and don't become even T3A 
members. They are justs like a horde of locust for TYPO3 and once this 
CMS is gone they move on to the next system, or they run a 
double/triple strategy already.   But, I also do believe that there are 
others which want to contribute. We should also try to get aware of 
them - no matter if they "only" send money or if they want to develop.

> 
> What I mean with this is that gathering ideas and then gathering funds 
> for implementing these ideas may not be enough for actually making them 
> real, because you still need available manpower. Quite a lot of TYPO3 
> developers work for companies, which won't agree to work at rather low 
> rates (55€/h if you consider Association rates as a reference). 
> Freelancers might be more inclined to do so, but experience shows that 
> they are generally pretty busy.

Why not trying to listen more to new agencies or freelancers which 
wants to contribute? Please take a look at the comments on buzz. Afaik 
there were at least 2-3 which complaint that they tried to contribute, 
but didn't manage to get in touch with the T3A or responsible people. 
Actually it also took us some years to get it touch with some of the 
"old guys".
Why not having some sort of "Want to contribute? Join us" Banner on the 
new typo3.org? This could then lead to a page showing Ben with his 
contacts as a community manager. He could channel then these requests.

> 
> I don't mean to say that what you suggest should not be attempted. It's 
> definitely a good idea and the "sponsored projects" back in 2008 were a 
> somewhat similar attempt at getting agencies more involved in funding, 
> and definitely in a more direct way than just being T3A members.
> 
> Cheers

Cheers