[TYPO3-dev] not amused...

[Francois Suter]

Hi both Steffens,

I can understand that you feel some disappointment. Feature freeze is
never a nice time, because that's when some stuff gets left out and it
is obviously a bitter moment, especially for those who suggested or
promoted some of this stuff. Nevertheless there's a time when feature
freeze must happen, lest new features never get released.

The core team is a rather large group and there are of course personal
likes and dislikes as in every group. Clashes happen and may give a
general bad impression, but I think that - in general - the core team
works well as a team. Things could be improved and we certainly want to
do that in the future.

> I really hoped there would be more activity on the list by core-devs on
> the day before FF, bringing more features into 4.3, for which authors
> spent several hours.
> Of course, not everything can't get in and I also don't want to blame any
> (core-)devs.

As Steffen Ritter mentioned, we are indeed all volunteers. TYPO3 (v4)
doesn't have a single "professional" (as in "full-time") core team
member. We work mostly outside of job and family hours. Actually I am
always amazed that we got so far with such an amateur structure (and I
don't mean "amateur" in terms of skills, but "amateur" in terms of not
being paid for the work).

There's no company behind TYPO3 like there is for other open source
projects, there have been also no investments, not venture capital. We
work on a shoe-string budget and we still manage to do a pretty good
piece of software given the conditions.

A lot of agencies out there are making a lot of money with TYPO3 and
don't invest a single penny in its development. Does that sound right?

So we do what we can and, yes, in that limited time we give preference
to RFCs that matter more to us. This doesn't mean that other RFCs are
not good.

What would really improve the situation would be if we released versions
more often. If you knew that you just had to wait 6 months for new
features, it would be less of a heartbreak than a 18 months wait. We
dearly wanted to release 4.3 much earlier, but it didn't happen for a
whole lot of reasons. Manpower, again, is one of them.

> Nevertheless I have the same feelings about factions of core
> developers (kind of "ignoring" other factions or often only chalking
> up missing documentation).

I feel personnally addressed by that remark, as I have often sent
reminders about missing documentation. Maybe you feel that documentation
is not important. That's not my point of view. There are already many
things which are not documented at all or not properly. At least I try
to keep track of what new features get in and make sure these are
documented.

I think documentation is a vital part of a project. TYPO3 used to have a
brilliant documentation. Many docs are now old or even obsolete and this
is not good. Modestly I try to improve the situation.

Cheers

-- 

Francois Suter
Cobweb Development Sarl - http://www.cobweb.ch