Claus Due, Fluid Man - TYPO3 is not only Enterprise CMS

Involved with TYPO3 for 12+ years. Head maintainer of the Fluid engine. Core-merger with responsibilities in Fluid integration, caching and performance.

Started working for a company that serviced TYPO3 clients, then began making contributions in the form of extensions and later on, core patches.

I contribute as core merger, maintainer and owner of relatively high-profile extension collections. I encourage clients to open-source their productions whenever this is appropriate, and select clients with preference for those that either publish the result of the work I do for them or otherwise contribute (in particular to TYPO3).

Time. It takes insane amounts of time to build a “brand” the way I did - through publishing extensions and maintaining them for more than a decade, through a decade of core contributions and involving myself as core merger. Basic tip (for those that wish to pursue the same road I used): involve yourself, stay committed and make sure your work is as high quality as possible. And if you have good ideas, share them!

Not surprised at all, though there have been troubling times (TYPO3 v5 and Neos schism). The overall success is due to persistence and taking responsibility, not luck. The future looks like increased adoption of things like PSR and external libraries to reduce the “not invented here” thinking and general size/complexity of TYPO3 as a product.

Reduction of technical debt, adoption of community standards like PSR, headless CMS.

TYPO3 spent many, many years living within a community language barrier because an overwhelming majority of users are German which caused so much of the third-party sources of information and assistance to be in German language. This hasn’t significantly changed until quite recently - and it’s difficult to (re)gain traction in for example appealing to the US market. TYPO3 v5 failure also has had a negative effect on both old and new users.

Personal view (opinionated): TYPO3 very much focuses on being the “Enterprise CMS” which almost entirely leaves out a grass-roots user base. The way grass-roots work is among other things by individual/small users getting used to the CMS and finding the strengths it has to offer - and then going on to recommend its use in companies they work for, agencies they have contact with, etc.

This is one area where WP did it exactly the opposite: appealing to the small users first and then increasingly becoming used for larger-scale operations.

Not sure what this question means. I don’t find it hard to explain to for example agencies that with FOSS you don’t pay with money, you pay with time (which you use to involve yourself, contribute patches, share visions, participate in sprints and so on). Nor do I find it difficult to explain how the source code being available publicly has the potential to increase things like security by allowing any third party to evaluate and suggest improvements.

The main idea to sell: sure, you help others instead of helping only yourself - but this also works in reverse - others help you instead of only helping themselves.

Personal view (opinionated): less focus on being “The Enterprise CMS” and more focus on becoming more accessible and appealing to smaller users who in turn can help drive up the demand for and spread of knowledge about TYPO3 as more than just an “Enterprise” CMS.

Seems like a nice site, but the idea of a monetised marketplace doesn’t really appeal to me - and I am completely outside of the target group with no current or future need for what is offered. I do however quite like the idea of selling prepared templates for creating sites, since this is one of the things that has increased WP popularity in ways we’ve never been able to do with TYPO3. Writing good Fluid templates for TYPO3 normally requires a significant amount of developer-level knowledge (creating extensions, writing data processors, ViewHelpers, knowing how to place template files and so on) so this is something that I’m sure will appeal to people creating smaller sites - which is exactly an audience that I believe we should do more to attract.

Given that PHP is not only the most wide-spread programming language for web delivery, it is also often picked as the starting language for beginners. Together these gave TYPO3 a foot in the door to appeal to a large base of developers and the opportunity to gain exposure in junior developers - but unfortunately a large part of this potential was missed by TYPO3 asserting itself as “Enterprise” grade. So, being PHP based has been important for popularity but could have been used even better.

Multilingual/multisite appeals to enterprise users and is a main focus. Extensions appeal more to smaller users who don’t do, or don’t have the capacity to do, in-house development. Ease of use is unfortunately the one aspect that is most lacking (or to some extent even a detriment to success).

Since start: Benni Mack, Oliver Hader, Georg Ringer. More recently: Alexander Schnitzler, Mathias Brodala. No longer active (sadly!): Dmitry Dulepov, Ingo Renner.

Keeping up with deprecations caused by removal of technical debt - which is hard, but necessary, and which will be a factor for many years to come.

Usetypo3.com for blog articles that go in-depth. StackOverflow section for TYPO3 where help is given quite fast in most cases.

See above re: target audience and becoming more inclusive by not isolating TYPO3 as “Enterprise”.

More active contributors, yes. In awareness, branding, and marketing - not so much. In UX, architecture, and removal of technical debt - absolutely!

There are many, but I have a special fondness for Lucene/Solr. In general, Apache Foundation software is hugely important.

Brewing beer, playing games and consuming logic-based philosophy.