What is your idea about?
The existing TYPO3 books “TYPO3 Extbase” and “TYPO3 CMS Certified Developer” will undergo an initial review and be updated to make them compatible with the newer TYPO3 LTS versions.
What is the potential impact of your idea?
The TYPO3 certification process ensures continuous revenue for the TYPO3 Association. In addition, it professionalizes TYPO3 editors, admins, consultants and developers and ensures the spreading of the word. Having an up-to-date TYPO3 standard work for the certification process is therefore a purpose in itself. For years, certification aspirants have been wondering about outdated learning materials, especially the official TYPO3 books “TYPO3 Extbase” and “TYPO3 CMS Certified Developer”. The current pricing model and thus the income of the books do not seem to motivate the authors enough to continue working on the books on a regular basis. As the TYPO3 Documentation Team will continue with the further improvement of the TYPO3 documentation on docs.typo3.org this year, this budget would be a test balloon for the simultaneous improvement of the books. This could uncover interesting correlations between the two areas of work, making it easier to maintain both in the future and therefore more reliable.
Once the books are up to date again, it might be worthwhile to evolve the pricing model and switch to one that generates more revenue, e.g. by paying per TYPO3 LTS release instead of paying once for lifetime updates. Another task would be to get the books into all popular bookstores.
Who can / should implement your idea?
I will take care myself
Hi Oliver, i would get in contact with Michael if the idea is wanted and budget granted. My current idea would be to make it an Association book (making it the copyright holder then) where effort and revenue will form part of the annual total association budget. Greetings, Alex
Wouldn’t it make sense to coordinate with Michael beforehand. I’m not an expert here but he is the copyright owner, so if you want to just refurbish / update the existing books instead of publishing completely new books, I don’t see how the Association can be the copyright holder then.
The idea is not primarily about copyright, but about using merger effects by having documentation work done in two places at the same time in the future, so both places are always up to date and enabling other areas to profit from this ground work. If the idea is accepted as something that will take the project to the next level, I think it will be no problem to work out a way with Michael for the future copyright and compensation model. But I encourage everyone to finalize the concept with Michael now.
Hi Alexander,
if there are any numbers attached to a possible revenue it sure would be worth an estimate. As some efforts are always in need of covering the costs this would be a parameter we’d add!
thx!
I understand your aspiration and appreciate your encouragement. Your approach, however, is questionable. As the copyright owner of these books, you should have contacted me before submitting a budget idea based on assumptions. It is, for example, not true that I am not interested in continuing working on the books.
A new edition of the TCCI study guide (for TYPO3 integrators) is a work in progress, and I plan to make a pre-release of the 6th edition available in April 2022 at Leanpub. I’d also like to publish a new version of the TCCD study guide (for TYPO3 developers) later this year, but this task has dependencies that are unfortunately not in my control.
Regarding the TYPO3 Extbase book, I do not intend to transfer the copyright to the TYPO3 Association at this time. I tried this a few years ago through a budget application, but it did not work out. That’s why I authored and self-published the 3rd edition of the TYPO3 Extbase book/eBook independent from the Assocation in 2019. I doubt that it would be any different this time
thanks for the preview. If you think, your current workflow is fine and the release cycle is too, then i abstain from my budget request. My intention is solely to solve the issue of not having up-to-date books of TYPO3 and how to overcome it with minimal effort.
A short summary why @jiriki abstained from his budget application:
• @mschams is the copyright owner of those books and has no intentions to transfer the copyright. This would as well include a preliminary discussion with the board and wouldn’t be a budget application.
• There is release-plan by the copyright owner
