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Myrna Gönnemann (00:00)
Hi Flo, great to have you here.

Florian Froidevaux (00:02)
Thanks for the invitation.

Myrna Gönnemann (00:04)
I'd like to hear from you why open source is still relevant in 2026.

Florian Froidevaux (00:10)
It's not just still relevant; it's becoming more and more relevant. Just look at everything that's going on around the world right now—being independent of individual vendors is simply crucial. And that's exactly what we're seeing at public authorities, universities, and everywhere else. If you rely on proprietary software, you're dependent. Dependent on license agreements that tell you how much you have to pay. And if the vendor raises its prices, you have to go along with it. If you're using software that's deployed company-wide across large corporations, you can't just switch it out either.

Myrna Gönnemann (00:49)
Yes, and I think part of it is always that a lot of people don't even know what all counts as open source and what open source actually means. Would you like to explain that for us?

Florian Froidevaux (01:03)
Ultimately, the microphone we're speaking into here almost certainly has some open-source components in it. Every phone, every smartwatch, as I said, every microphone, every tiny piece of electronics, even the Mars rover. So without open source we wouldn't be able to use any electronic devices at all.

Myrna Gönnemann (01:23)
That's exactly why it's so important that there's a certain level of commitment from people who dedicate themselves to open source. What does that look like in your experience? What does contribution look like?

Florian Froidevaux (01:33)
There's every kind of contribution. What we see and know best, of course, is code contribution. And I always like to compare it to volunteer work. If you look at a football club, you've got volunteers there of every stripe. Whether it's the groundskeeper, the coach, or the board members. That's all contribution. And in software, like with us, we have our board members, the Board. The two of us are both on the marketing team, trying to produce material somehow. Documentation is absolutely crucial, the Core Team goes without saying.

Myrna Gönnemann (02:07)
A mean question, but your competitors benefit substantially from what you contribute. On the Core or as a Co-Team Lead — those are things your competitors then make use of. How do you handle that? How do you justify it for yourselves?

Florian Froidevaux (02:21)
Well, ultimately it works the other way around just as much. Meaning we benefit every single day from everything b13 does and everyone else who gets involved here. In that sense, the whole dynamic in this community is simply different. When I think back to my e-commerce days, where you look back on proprietary software and a strong sense of competition, that's just no fun. We all benefit from each other, and we cooperate. In most cases, one company builds a product, and the other agencies say, "Okay, let's set up a partnership, and everyone benefits in the end." So I really don't see it as much of a problem that our competitors benefit from our contributions.

Myrna Gönnemann (03:08)
How did you get into contribution? Was that a personal decision, or was it a professional requirement?

Florian Froidevaux (03:14)
Stefan is our managing director, of course, and he's very, very deeply rooted in the Board, and when I started at in2code I really came from a completely different corner, and then I ... how did that go again?

He said: Here, Marketing Team, Luisa, go and have a chat — because I'd had some idea about what we should be doing on the marketing side. Oh right, it was tracking. That's it. That's how I got into it, and I started helping out on the Marketing Team and did more and more in that direction. Then came the first talks at various camps, and that's how it always goes with me, more and more, and now I'm somehow Co-Team Lead. That happened more by chance than by plan, but there you go.

Myrna Gönnemann (03:56)
Why are you still doing it?

Florian Froidevaux (03:57)
It just doesn't let go of you.

Myrna Gönnemann (03:59)
Nicely put: It doesn't let go of you.

Florian Froidevaux (04:01)
It's really true. I'd always enjoyed volunteer work before that as well, at a sports club. It was part of my studies too — club management was pretty much a core topic. And without volunteering nothing in this world would work. Certainly not here in Germany. We have a very, very strong culture of volunteering. You simply notice how much you get back. I mean, we're at the Dev Days right now and I'm sitting here with people I would never have met otherwise. I'd never have met them otherwise.

Myrna Gönnemann (04:33)
Now of course you're also fortunate to be at a company, at an agency, that lets you contribute during working hours. What does that actually look like in your day-to-day agency work? So when do you work on an open source project and when on a client project, and how do you divide it up?

Florian Froidevaux (04:49)
At in2code it's organized so that we have a regular tracking system, a ticket system, and projects within it. TYPO3 Association Contribution is its own project, and working time gets booked to it, which means we can actually track it very well. As a rule it's also agreed individually with everyone.

That's the very clear intention: Anyone who wants to contribute is welcome to. Of course we have to keep it in some kind of proportion. So for the time I spend on my marketing activities, for example, I have Wednesday afternoons, which is also when our team meeting takes place and so on. And I actually use it that way too, so that on Wednesday afternoon I get most of the things done that I do for the TYPO3 Marketing Team. I've worked out for myself that I spend 3, 4, sometimes slightly fewer hours a week on it. And if I say, okay, it's a lot at the moment, more, because there are events coming up or whatever, then it's my free time too, of course. And the others handle it pretty much the same way. Andreas has a fixed day for contribution. That is, as a Core Team member he needs more time. I don't know exactly, so please don't hold me to it. But everyone has their own time that they can book to it, and the rest of the time is their own.

Myrna Gönnemann (06:07)
Do you push new employees towards it? For instance, do you actively get them involved in contribution, or is it more of an intrinsic wish that then gets made possible?

Florian Froidevaux (06:17)
When you end up at in2code, you notice very quickly what kind of spirit there is here. You can see it right now, in fact — the apprentices get sent to the Dev Days almost immediately in their first year of training, whenever that's possible. That's where you meet your first people, and as a rule it catches on straight away, because that spirit is simply what defines us.

Myrna Gönnemann (06:40)
Or as you put it: You just get stuck to it.

Florian Froidevaux (06:43)
Of course, we also have employees who keep completely out of it and simply do their work and don't contribute. Although — not contributing: what happens there is more like invisible contributions. Our extensions and so on, for example, are freely and publicly available too, and people work on those extensions, upgrade them, do bug fixes. Ultimately that's all contribution as well. But they're not active in the community, and that isn't pushed or expected or demanded by anyone.

Myrna Gönnemann (07:14)
But do people apply to you specifically because they know you support it?

Florian Froidevaux (07:18)
Yes, absolutely. In recruiting, when I look left and right, we don't have the trouble finding employees that others have.

Myrna Gönnemann (07:27)
Would you say that also has an effect on long-term employee retention?

Florian Froidevaux (07:31)
Yes, it's perhaps not that easy to measure, but I'm sure that for employees who are involved in the community, like myself, the likelihood of changing companies drops very, very, very sharply. Because you don't move to another company for maybe a few hundred euros more if you know that you might not be able to do the thing you love, the thing you give up your free time for anyway, at work any more, and that you can't talk to your colleagues about it any more.

I'm very sure it has an effect on employee retention.

Myrna Gönnemann (08:06)
So it's less the benefit that's in the foreground, it's the attachment. The attachment to a project and to a passion that you have there. Exactly. That's cool. Let me ask it differently: But aren't you afraid? You have a lot of people who contribute, who are very visible because they contribute a lot and have simply been contributing for years. Aren't you afraid, from the agency's point of view, that they might also become more visible to competitors and then meet people at all these events and as a result possibly get poached?

Florian Froidevaux (08:36)
That risk is always there. We don't want to make people invisible. That doesn't achieve anything at all. Someone who is visible is more visible in every respect, including to potential clients. So there again we have a benefit. And invisibility is no guarantee that someone will stay with you just because I hide them. If you say, don't go to that event so often, or this and that, so you don't get poached — every employee notices that immediately, of course. I don't think that gets you anywhere.

Myrna Gönnemann (09:09)
If you had to put your hand on your heart: How does it look from a business perspective at your company, in terms of resources? Because you just said that in principle you have fixed days, some of you, or you have a fixed afternoon where time goes into it.

Florian Froidevaux (09:25)
What do you think, how much working time relative to marketing working time overall at in2code? Right, the ratio.

Myrna Gönnemann (09:33)
As a percentage?

I'd say, for it to make business sense: 10 percent?

Florian Froidevaux (09:40)
Of the time I spend on marketing ... across the company as a whole ... it's two hours of marketing, one hour of contribution.

Myrna Gönnemann (09:48)
Wow! Wow, wow! That is a lot!

Florian Froidevaux (09:50)
Yes.

Myrna Gönnemann (09:51)
That, yes, that really surprises me, because of course that's also a huge business factor that you're building in.

Florian Froidevaux (10:00)
Yes, well, obviously you can't quantify it precisely, and of course I can't reveal all the figures either, but if you convert the contribution time into potential revenue somehow, then it's more than the marketing budget, far more. That

Myrna Gönnemann (10:17)
Yes, that.

Florian Froidevaux (10:18)
is crazy. And the marketing budget is largely contribution, because it's the membership, because it's these event sponsorships. Well, sponsoring isn't contribution, of course, we do get visibility in return.

But it's like sports sponsoring, say. That banner advertising may not necessarily bring in a new client, but it gives us the visibility. So as I said, we don't need to do any recruiting, we don't do any advertising, we only do organic visibility, our social media and events.

Myrna Gönnemann (10:47)
Setting aside the visibility to potential new employees: How does it look in terms of visibility with end clients? How much does contributing to the project itself, to the product itself, influence your standing with end clients as well? Or does it influence your standing at all?

Florian Froidevaux (11:06)
When someone submits a contact form with us, there's a field asking: How did you find us? And in 20 to 30 percent of cases it says: People just know you.

Myrna Gönnemann (11:17)
You really can't do better than that. That's great feedback.

Florian Froidevaux (11:20)
Exactly, so it means, yes, you're known anyway for everything we do, and you no longer have to explain that you're the TYPO3 expert. That's already clear simply from the visibility. We no longer have to explain ourselves somehow, prove our qualifications with certificates of some kind. Which you do have as well. For one thing, I think we have more certificates than employees.

But in that case it's not about that any more. You're no longer discussing whether you can do it.

Myrna Gönnemann (11:50)
Do end clients ultimately benefit as well from the fact that you contribute? Aside from your positioning — how do you market that?

Florian Froidevaux (11:59)
You can't market it directly. I think the client benefits from it: If a bug turns up somewhere in the Core with us, we fix it ourselves. Then there's a pull request and it goes through the merge process, as you're certainly familiar with. That means you don't have to wait for the community to build this feature — we need it for our client, so we do it, we contribute it. When I run a training session on TYPO3 v14, then

I know what I'm talking about, because I put together all the marketing material for it together with you. It's the same with Stefan, when the question comes up: So what does the TYPO3 project look like? Then Stefan can say: I can tell you exactly what the TYPO3 project looks like and how things work there. If it becomes a topic with any stakeholder, I can rely on the project. It means we simply know exactly what's going on. And the client benefits from that immediately.

Myrna Gönnemann (12:52)
Definitely.

There's such a thing as greenwashing. Is there something like that for open source too, open source washing for marketing purposes, so to speak? Do you come across that?

Florian Froidevaux (13:02)
Well, every contribution to open source is helpful. And in the same way I'd say every little bit of greenwashing is a little bit helpful. Of course I can talk about it much more loudly. I mean, I'm sitting here for marketing purposes too, to make it clear that we contribute and that it's a valuable thing. What I do perhaps see is that there are agencies that live it to a greater or lesser extent and that make it visible to a greater or lesser extent. I wouldn't call it washing, because I think that's wrong. Every membership simply moves us forward.

Myrna Gönnemann (13:38)
Yes, definitely.

Florian Froidevaux (13:40)
That's why I wouldn't call it "washing"

Myrna Gönnemann (13:42)
I think that's really well put. Open source contribution is simply enormously important, in whatever form.

Florian Froidevaux (13:47)
And if someone emphasizes it that strongly, anyone can check it, too. You just look at how many commits that company has actually made, or whether they're really there when issues come up.

Myrna Gönnemann (13:59)
And ultimately other companies that contribute a lot themselves benefit from it again as well, because the more it's publicized that contribution is valuable, the more it gets seen as a mark of quality, and the more people end up contributing — which is exactly what we all want. So: The more people help shape it, the better. But would you advise other agencies to get actively involved as well and take part in open source projects?

Florian Froidevaux (14:25)
Yes, definitely. You have to find your entry point somewhere, and it has to be in the company's veins somehow. If I only use proprietary software myself and only offer proprietary software, then it's going to be very hard to find a way in.

Myrna Gönnemann (14:40)
So where do you start? Say, for example: I'm someone listening to this podcast right now, and I'm at a company that doesn't contribute yet. Where do I start? I'm a developer.

Florian Froidevaux (14:52)
For a developer the classic route is: You find a bug in a system and you report it. That applies to proprietary software in exactly the same way, by the way. Finding a bug and saying: Here's a bug, I've identified it as such and such, what can I do, can I help fix it? I think that's the first and easiest way in. The next thing is to go to a camp.

If I see that I'd need an extension or something for a particular topic, I look at whether there's an old extension that's been orphaned. Or can I build a new extension and release it freely? Sometimes they're only small topics, sometimes they're big ones. Can I team up with others on those topics?

Myrna Gönnemann (15:27)
Yes. I think that's great.

Florian Froidevaux (15:30)
Achieving a meaningful scale for the agency itself, like we have now — that's not something I do in two or three quarters. That's years of identity; building it up is a huge process.

Myrna Gönnemann (15:45)
Definitely. Then thank you so much, Flo, for all the insights into your day-to-day agency work and into your contribution processes. You've also got your own podcast now. Would you like to say a few words about it?

Florian Froidevaux (15:59)
Okay. "Flo und Flo" is the name of the podcast. That's Florian Langer and me. We're good friends at the agency and we talk about things that come up on the office grapevine, and we've now started this after-work podcast, and the first episode is a bit about TV advertising.

Myrna Gönnemann (16:16)
Very cool. So go and listen, and until next time.

Florian Froidevaux (16:19)
Until then, until then.