Hello,

today I used my chance to make a small interview with Michael Stucki. I asked him some general and some special questions about TYO3 and the next release (By the way, you can find this interview also on news.typo3.org):

Thomas:
Hello Michael. For those of us who didn't know you allready. Can you shortly introduce yourself and can you explain what your position in the TYPO3 community is?

Michael:
Hi Thomas. My name is Michael Stucki, I'm 25 years old and living in Switzerland. My job in the TYPO3 project is primarly being the release manager (coordinating the steps to finalize a TYPO3 release). Besides of this I'm an active member of the TYPO3 Association, member of the security team plus doing some development work. During the day I'm working as a web developer for snowflake productions in Zürich/Switzerland.

Thomas:
The Snowboardtour 2006 is over. Can you tell us a short interesting story from the tour that you will keep in mind?

Michael:
Hmm. I think the football game of Switzerland against Denmark is something that I will remember for some time. Our luck was that the key players of Denmark had a few beers to much before that game. Goalkeeper Skårhøj had no chances against Switzerlands strikers.

Thomas:
Before the tour, there was an announcement that a RC1 of TYPO3 4.0 will come after the tour. What is the status?

Michael:
Well, both are close to be ready although I admint that we're a little late with both of them. The next step will be 4.0beta3 which contains the new backend skin and the new Extension Manager for accessing the upcoming TER 2.0. Our plan is to release RC1 very short after that beta, so you can still expect the release candidate within a week from now.

Thomas:
I think the main features of the 4.0 branch are already known. But there will be some changes in the distribution itself. What changes will that be? For example, what will be changed concerning extensions?

Michael:
Yes you are right. We have decided to remove the global extension from the standard distribution. Means: typo3/ext/ will become empty. We checked all global extensions to see if they are required by everyone or not. Those must-have extensions have been moved into typo3/sysext/, all others have been moved back into TER.

Thomas:
And what is the concrete reason for doing so? Do you want to decrease the package size or why you decided this way?

Michael:
There were several reasons. The idea to remove global extensions from the core distribution was planned since the introduction of the system extensions. The main advantage is that these extensions can be developed (and released) independently from the core. Another reason was - as you guessed correctly - that the size of the core was too big (e.g. phpmyadmin is solely 10MB). After all I think the removal has advantages for users as well as for developers. TYPO3 will become much more flexible and easier. The only problem could be the migration from version 3.8 which requires detailed information for the users.

Thomas:
Okay I see. Are there any other important changes in the system that you want to mention?

Michael:
Of course. There are so many that it's really hard to pick just a few of them.

Thomas:
Can you try? What are the most important?

Michael:
There will be the workspaces (a new versioning concept), the new backend skin, and many more. The TYPO3 Association has sponsored some projects to be finalized for official release. Some of these are the DBAL extension and rtehtmlarea (a platform-independent RTE). Additionally, DAM 1.0 and TemplaVoila 1.0 will be released together with 4.0, but they will not be part of the core distribution. You can get them from TER instead. TYPO3 4.0 will not contain any Gremlins because they have been zapped by the Ghostbusters! :-) (At least, we hope we got all of them...)

Thomas:
That sounds very interesting, I think I am not the only one who is very curious about the new version. :-) And now something on my own account. Do you know typo3-unleashed.net?

Michael:
Yes I know it and I added it to my news aggregator (akregator). I like these TYPO3 news departments (there are some more) who present interesting information for the rest of the community. Keep up that good work, Thomas!

Thomas:
Thank you! Now, last but not least, do you have something else to to say or mention what I left out with my questions? Or do you want to greet somebody? ;-)

Michael:
Thanks for your work for TYPO3.

Thomas:
Thank you for this interview and thank you for all your efforts!

Michael:
You're welcome.