[TYPO3-dev] TYPO3 heresy: what about "selling" pro extensions?

[Chris Zepernick {SwiftLizard}]

Hi ,
> Stefano Cecere wrote:
>> synthesis: is it possibile to sell TYPO3 extensions to public?
>>
>> detailed: to help spread TYPO3 and to have cutting edge pro extensions,
>> could it possibile to deliver a "base" extension free, as normal TYPO3
>> ext, and sell the pro/advanced/ad free version?
>> my concerns are  GPL/TYPO3 licenses and TYPO3 philosophy...
 >
> Am I too pessimistic? :)
>

I think we should at least give it a try, although you might be right.

I know a lot of you guys and we are all professionals, but if we are all 
honest paying customer will always be served first, and that's what 
killed many good approaches and slowed down the development of many 
other extension. And this is also what keeps good extensions from being
uploaded to TER, because they are at least an advantage in the daily 
business.

Perhaps this way we get some better quality into the TER, and some of 
the pros back on board of the community again, because as Dmitry said we 
are all way older now and most of us have families we have to feed, so 
if there is no return besides a smile and a "good work" one might think 
twice about community work and rather spend time with his family.

Don't get me wrong, I realy like TYPO3, although my part of the 
community work is more in showing people how to get the most out of it,
and getting them to use TYPO3, so more growing and stabilizing community 
then really contributing the project.

Mostly because the extensions I am developing belong to the agencies and 
companies I work for as a freelancer, although I try to get them to 
contribute. But then again there is this money and advantage issue, 
witch keeps most of the good exts from seeing the light of the community.

The othter anoying side of this game is that this behavior keeps many 
companys from contributing as well.

Lately I had a conversation in witch my current customer said why should 
we contribute new cool features to TV we have developed if they (a 
popular TYPO3 agency) don´t. This way they only will have benefit from 
our work, but we will not have none of those cool features we have seen 
a while back in a podcast.


So to my mind this is a good approach, but we have to be very careful in 
the way how we do it, otherwise we might damage this great project.


Cheers

Chris