A strong open-source project needs more than good code – why we deliberately invest in the TYPO3 ecosystem

Anyone who looks at TYPO3 purely from the perspective of a single client project might easily conclude that the platform consists essentially of the core, a handful of extensions and an active community. In reality, however, that is only the visible part of the system. Behind every new TYPO3 version lie countless decisions made over many months by core developers, maintainers, agencies, freelancers and many other contributors. Documentation gets written, pull requests get debated, architectures get reworked and bugs get analysed long before they ever appear in a changelog.

The longer we work with TYPO3, the clearer it becomes to us that precisely this part of the ecosystem is often underestimated. An enterprise CMS does not live on its source code alone. It lives on the people who are willing to take responsibility for its further development, to share knowledge with one another and to invest time even when no short-term economic benefit results from it.

For this reason, in 2024 we made the deliberate decision to become an official TYPO3 Consultant Partner of TYPO3 GmbH. Naturally we are pleased about this partnership, yet for us it is far more than an additional entry on our website or an award for work already done. We understand it instead as an obligation to actively give our experience from enterprise projects back to the community, while at the same time helping agencies, freelancers and companies find easier access to TYPO3.

Strong open-source projects do not happen by chance

Many successful open-source projects have one thing in common. They have a community that is willing to invest continuously in the project's future. That investment, however, does not consist of code alone. Architecture discussions, documentation, conferences, community events, the exchange of knowledge and the willingness to share experience from real projects openly with one another are just as important.

This last point in particular strikes us as especially important.

In recent years we have spoken with many agencies that were fundamentally interested in TYPO3 but found getting started difficult. Some had years of experience with WordPress or Drupal and wanted to understand how TYPO3 projects differ in organisational terms. Others had already delivered their first projects and were looking for best practices for larger enterprise installations. Still others were facing their first extensive upgrade and wanted to avoid typical mistakes as far as possible.

What stood out was that many of the questions kept recurring – not because the agencies were inexperienced, but because they were facing the very same challenges that we ourselves had had to solve a few years earlier.

The more often we held these conversations, the clearer it became to us that knowledge within an open-source ecosystem has considerably greater value when it is shared rather than remaining solely inside individual companies.

Why we sent four developers to Fuerteventura

A good example of this was the first TYPO3 Surf Camp on Fuerteventura.

When TYPO3 GmbH launched this format, we deliberately decided to send no fewer than four developers from our team. From a purely commercial standpoint, that is not an especially obvious decision. During that time four experienced developers are missing from client projects, internal capacity shrinks and barely any billable hours arise that week.

Even so, we would make the same decision again at any time.

The real value of a gathering like this does not lie in writing as many lines of code as possible for the TYPO3 core. The conversations between the people who work with TYPO3 every day are at least equally important. Architectural decisions become more comprehensible when you know the background behind them. Discussions about future developments take on a different perspective when you hold them together with core developers. And many questions that would take several days in a GitHub issue can be placed in context within a few minutes in a personal conversation.

This kind of experience can neither be bought nor learned from documentation – it arises solely through collaboration.

Our goal is not to become the biggest agency

When we discuss internally what role we want to take on within the TYPO3 ecosystem in the long term, one term comes up particularly often.

We want to be a hub.

Not in the sense of a central organisation or a gatekeeper, but as a place where experience comes together and then flows back out into the community.

In recent years it has become ever clearer to us that many companies solve the same technical challenges independently of one another. Agencies develop similar deployment processes, create their own upgrade checklists or document typical pitfalls for their developers. At the same time, excellent solutions emerge in many places that others never hear about.

We believe there is enormous potential precisely here.

The easier it is to exchange best practices, the faster the quality of the entire ecosystem rises. In the end this benefits not only agencies or freelancers, but also end clients, who receive more stable projects, better maintainability and a wider choice of experienced TYPO3 partners.

For this reason we deliberately invest time in conversations with other agencies, support freelancers in getting started on larger enterprise projects and share much of our experience publicly – whether at events, in personal conversations or in articles like this one.

Why we believe collaboration matters more than competition

In the agency world in particular, competition is often discussed very intensely. Of course companies compete for projects and clients. At the same time, within the TYPO3 community we have for many years experienced something different.

The most successful projects often emerge where companies are willing to share their knowledge with one another.

• One agency develops a good deployment strategy.
• Another improves an extension.
• Someone documents a complicated migration step.
• A core developer puts an architectural decision up for discussion.

Many of these contributions seem small on their own. Together, however, they ensure that TYPO3 as a platform gets a little better every year.

This is precisely why we do not regard the exchange of knowledge as charity. In our view it is an investment in the future of the entire ecosystem.

And in the end we ourselves benefit from it too. Because the more successful TYPO3 becomes, the more successful, in the long term, the companies that specialise in this platform can be as well.

What we have learned from this

When we look back over the past few years, the partnership with TYPO3 GmbH was never the actual goal for us. It was rather the visible expression of a development that had begun considerably earlier.

The more enterprise projects we accompanied, the stronger our desire became not to keep the experience we gained solely within our own organisation. Good ideas become more valuable when others can develop them further. Good processes improve faster when they are discussed. And a strong open-source project does not come about because a select few companies are particularly successful, but because many companies take on responsibility together.

Perhaps this very thought best describes why we engage today as an official TYPO3 Consultant Partner. Not because we believe we already know everything, but because we are convinced that the TYPO3 ecosystem is at its strongest when knowledge does not end at company boundaries but instead keeps developing and being shared.