10 frequently asked TYPO3 questions

TYPO3 NEOS is the new product. What's going on with the 'old' one (i.e. TYPO3 CMS)?
A [Mathias Schreiber]: Well, after a short period of gathering focus and strength in the time Benni Mack, the Team and me came up with a mission statement for the years to come - Embrace & Innovate.
Since then we have undertaken huge steps, bigger than anything done before in the entire project.
We streamlined processes, made taking decisions easier and most importantly of all: unblocked and motivated the team.
The feedback we have gotten from the outside gives us confidence that we are on the right track with that.
Apart from the the concept of a Product Owner as a central contact both technically and business-wise has been picked up very positively by the community - showing that the relevance of TYPO3 CMS did not really decay over the last years.

Will TYPO3 CMS be continued anymore or will it be switched off when TYPO3 NEOS has come to age?
A [Benni Mack]: TYPO3 CMS will continue to be developed for as long as there are people using it, and the development has been as strong as ever in the last year. The next LTS version 7, to be released in fall 2015, will focus on a more intuitive user experience and also help integrators getting sites up and running faster.

Which one could/would you recommend for new projects, depending on dedicated customer needs?
A [Benni Mack]: Neos is surely still in a development phase where bigger projects with complex site structures and user management should depend on TYPO3 CMS. The label enterprise CMS needs to tackle larger projects in a stable and long-term manner. For content-only sites and/or integration with an existing FLOW application, Neos might be a better fit.

Will there be a migration path from TYPO3 CMS based systems to TYPO3 NEOS based systems in future?
A [Karsten Dambekalns]: Karsten points  to the <link https: neos.typo3.org learn>FAQ on the Neos website that mentions:
We need to distinguish between content import and template/extension import.
Template/Extension import is not possible, and will never be. However, if you use Extbase and Fluid in TYPO3 CMS already, it will be easier for you to port this code to Neos.
Content import is currently not possible.
However, while we do not have content import ready as of today, we are already experimenting with different approaches of a content migration process and think that pages and the standard TYPO3 CMS content elements like Text or Image will be importable in the future. Additionally, we’ll make sure that the conversion process is extensible, so you can adjust it if you use special FCEs or the like.
Martin Helmich (Mittwald AG) presented a tool at Inspiring Conference to bring TYPO3 legacy code into Flow: <link http: de.slideshare.net mhelmich inspiringcon15-bringing-typo3-legacy-applications-into-the-flow>de.slideshare.net/mhelmich/inspiringcon15-bringing-typo3-legacy-applications-into-the-flow
...and there is <link https: github.com ttreeagency contentrepositoryimporter>github.com/ttreeagency/ContentRepositoryImporter, which at least can serve as a base for importing content.

When can we expect NEOS extensions for dedicated customer purposes will become available?
A [Robert Lemke]: The concept of extensions is a bit different in Neos than the one you might know from TYPO3 CMS. First of all, many projects based on Neos don’t need specific extensions because many features can be implemented through TypoScript in combination with the Neos Content Repository. But of course there are extensions, too – we call them “packages”. A package can contain everything, be it Neos plugins, new content types, TypoScript or even new features for TypoScript itself. I’d estimate that there are a few hundred packages based on Neos and many of them can be found via packagist.org. The Neos team has plans for providing a Neos / Flow package repository on the project website and also started working on a simple implementation. Right now though this project has stalled because we need to invest the resources we have into the current major releases of Neos and Flow.

There are about 6.000 Extensions listed for TYPO3 CMS. But, only about 100+ are running within TYPO3 CMS 6.2. This numbers makes me confusing. Why do you remark 6.000 extensions although just 100+ are currently working the actual CMS release? What will happen with other 5.900 in future? Why aren't they updated/adapted to TYPO3 CMS 6.2 and 7.x?
A [Thomas Löffler]: Currently there are 1,043 (16-04-2015) extensions in the TYPO3 extension repository which are running for the current supported TYPO3 LTS versions 6.2 and 7.x. It's right that we have all together over 6,000 extensions, but most of them unfortunately aren't supported by their extension owners any more. The decision to "outdate" extensions was a move to improve the experience of Integrators by offering only the extensions which will run on your system. We didn't delete the extensions, just marked them as outdated. With setting a filter option in the TER search on typo3.org your search results will contain all outdated extensions as well. Everyone is welcome to update an outdated extension to run on a current TYPO3 version and ask the extension owner to upload it to TER or to transfer the extension key.

Why has the support for TYPO3 CMS 4.5 been extended and why do I have to pay a service fee for it now? Where can I order this paid support?
A [Mathias Schreiber]]: In Short: by popular demand.
So the TYPO3 Association approached us because it has been, in return, approached by its members.
Obviously there is a demand in the market for a solution. The posed problem seems to be that upgrading a website from 4.5 to 6.2 takes more time than some people anticipated.
So the main question is why do we need to charge a fee for that?
It’s important to understand that the security team simply does not have the manpower to keep 3 fully-fledged versions maintained in their spare time.
Especially since the codebase has gone through massive changes from the 4 branch to the 6 branch.
So we somehow need to make sure that the security team can actually put their other paid work aside in order to manage the additional version.
Apart from the whole security topic, it is important to understand that the support also takes care of browser incompatibilities of future browsers - so the amount of work spreads out over the boundaries of the security team.
We compiled a list of FAQs here as well as a form to order here.
<link http: typo3.org support>typo3.org/support/45-lts-support-plans/

How long will this charged kind of service for TYPO3 CMS 4.5 be available in future?
A [Benni Mack]: The extended support is available for one more year, expiring in April 2016.

Is this the first step for TYPO3 products leaving the Open Source idea moving on the way to paid products? Are there any commercial ideas behind it?
A [Olivier Dobberkau]:
The main idea of open source is that you can create value around code. If you closely look at the GPL you will find that this license gives you no guarantee of whatever kind. In our case the CMS Team gave for a certain time a guarantee on the product at no cost.
To answer your question: TYPO3 CMS will remain GPL. The support for the 4.5 LTS will become a paid service. No other plans for the moment.
In respect to the second question: We all want our products to be used in a commercial thus maybe also enterprise environment. Some companies have a very strict policy on how software can be used and security is one of their main concern. Analyzing market usage of TYPO3 CMS 4.5 and the requests from many members of the community lead to the presented solution. We also did not want to risk to leave people here alone and with this risking the good reputation of the TYPO3 products.

The upcoming version will provide even better tooling for those, consequently, adding full support for Cloud services, a revised Security Framework, HHVM support and many many more...