So why did I give TYPO3 away for free? What could make anyone spend 10 years of his life with a reduced income in order to work voluntarily on a piece of software that saves companies millions of EUROs. Well, I guess you have to ask differently. What could make anyone spend 10 years of this life to pursue excellence and perfection, using all his creative power to create a tool that daily helps thousands of people, inspiring people with his attitude and generally having caused a friendly and personal community to arise. The answer is obvious. I believe that the shear experience of all this positive energy can far outweight the feeling of being exploited. But a key catalyst for this view is also that my christian faith tells me two things: 1) Materialism has no lasting value. 2) Whatever my creativity can produce is meant to honor God since he gave me my talent in the first place. For me that translates into the vision of giving my best through TYPO3 to the world.

So that's my story. TYPO3 is my personal mission from God. And I think much of the transforming power of a belief in Jesus Christ is behind it and shows through in my own case. But just to make things clear; This is strictly my view. Everyone in the community has his or her own reasons and to my knowledge most of the people contributing are not christians in the same sense that I am. In fact TYPO3 is simply Open Source Software and "religiously neutral" as such. So don't worry.

It's not that I don't want to make money with TYPO3. After all that is what I have done the last years. But I'm not a millionaire and my income is unstable since donations play a part in it. After giving up core development it is even a bigger step in faith; what will I do next, how will I live now? But I trust God to have a plan.

Anyway, I never regretted publishing it under GPL. Long working nights, weeks without much sleep and 300 hours working a month in addition to the neglect of body, soul, God and wife - this cannot be payed back with money. At least I don't think this can be compensated with dead EURO-bills.

(Thinking about donating, take a look here.)

Turning the other cheek

There is no doubt that TYPO3 has inspired many people to consider their own outlook on contribution and volunteer work for a good cause. That is just so encouraging to know! But what has hurt me most during the years is not people making a living with TYPO3 but when people do not give anything back to the community. Or trying to make people think that TYPO3 is their own product. Always taking, never giving. That makes me angry for really good reasons!

However I want myself and TYPO3 as a whole to be "salt in the world" or "a light shining in darkness". These are christian metaphors. To me it means to be a source from which good things flow - even when they are exploited or laughed at. So should a minority of ill-minded people make us shut down the TYPO3 project in frustration? No. The Bible clearly tells us that we can expect a lot of selfishness from this world, but we are told to turn the other cheek!

The license

GPL has the appeal that the software is as free as it ever gets - and that attracts developers and users. On the other hand it offers no legal way to avoid "moral misuse" of TYPO3.

But as the original author of TYPO3 I will express my personal wish here; that TYPO3 is not used to spread material that is against the moral teaching of the Bible and the human rights. Especially I would be sad to see TYPO3 being used for pornographic material which in my eyes and personal experience is the greatest plague of the Internet and definitely one of the last things I wanted to support with my work.

Finally, we are kind people, not stupid. Please read the GPL rules for TYPO3 carefully. If you break them, we roll you in tar and feathers...