[Typo3-dev] templa voila new version, when ?

[Robert Lemke]

Hi Alex,

media.res | alex widschwendter wrote:

> in my opinion the money collected with the membership should go to these
> projects (TV, DAM, indexed search, ...) - projects nearly everybody
> uses... and make TYPO3 that cool ... but unfortunally are not that
> specifiec that somebody can claim it his personal sponsored feature ;)

yes, I mean, the T3A was basically founded just because we wanted to support
developers. The point is only that currently there is not enough money to
feed them all.

Let's do some calculation: Currently the Association has 178 members, two
thirds of them being individuals. Individuals pay 100€ per year, companies
500€:

54 * 500 = 27.000 €
124 * 100 = 12.400 €

Total per year: 39.400 €
That surely is a lot of money. 

Now let's assume we want to feed 5 developers:

40.000€ / 5 / 12 months = 666,66 €

The question is, who can live from 600€ per month? And the even more
interesting question is: Who would like to live from 600€ per month if he
could do commercial projects worth 6000€ per month?

In my personal opinion the solution could go into this direction:

  - Use the membership fees mainly for supporting that kind of development
no customer would like to pay for. For TYPO3 5.0 we plan a complete
refactoring of TCEmain for example, that is in my eyes a typical project
the Association should support. TemplaVoila on the other hand might be a
project which is sexy enough to raise some sponsoring from elsewhere.

  - A certain amount of money should also be spent on organisation. If we
don't organize development, contributions and tools like typo3.org it all
ends in a big chaos, because the TYPO3 project has become that big! I think
that this would be a good investment, and I would also be of that opinion
if I wasn't one of the guys who'd receive that money. 

  - Due to the limited resources of the Association developers like you and
me (and Kasper!) will always have to take care of their income themselves,
at least to a certain degree. I think your idea with fundable.org and other
tools (like Paypal etc.) is a good one and I could imagine using these
possibilities.

I don't complain that people don't pay me for TemplaVoila for example,
because I didn't even provide them with a roadmap yet! So my question is,
what information would you like to have which lets you having a good
feeling to sponsor a certain project? If I know that, I should do my
homework and publish that information.

As you know with some projects like also TemplaVoila, it's sometimes
difficult to foresee which features will be implemented and when. If we
would plan that completely, we would block a certain amount of innovation
and spontaneous development. And that basically is what makes TYPO3 so
cool: A lot of great ideas have become reality because there was the chance
to just try it out.

The situation I dream of is that a bunch of developers are paid by the
Association and a group of companies covering 3/4 of their time. Those who
pay them have total confidence that they do their best to bring TYPO3
ahead. The last quarter of their time could be used for whatever project
they like, maybe they'd like to give some training or work on a commercial
project implementing a website to not loose contact to the real world ...

An adpot-a-developer campaign would be great ...

Well, I'm already late with submitting my papers for TYCON3, so please
excuse me for a while, I'll get back to the discussion later on ...

Anyway, thank you very much for bringing up this discussion. It is a topic
which absorbs me and some other "core" developers for quite some time ..

Cheers,
robert

-- 
Robert Lemke
TYPO3 Association - Research & Development
Member of the board
http://association.typo3.org