Mathias Bolt Lesniak joins the toujou team

We are happy to welcome our toujou newcomer Mathias Bolt Lesniak. Mathias has not only been very involved in the TYPO3 sphere for many years, first of all as a TYPO3 Association Board Member for Communications. He is also an absolute Open Source evangelist. Great to have you as part of toujou, Mathias, and welcome to our team! 

Find below the message from Mathias Bolt Lesniak, in which he comments on his involvement with toujou.

Welcome to My New Job — Invite Me

I am thrilled to announce that I will be working for toujou.com, an Open Source website-SaaS. It's based on TYPO3 CMS, so I'm still on home ground. What's good for toujou is good for Open Source, and vice versa. toujou is contributing to the PHP and TYPO3 ecosystems in many ways, and talking up Open Source is the way we’re selling it, so I’m in my happy place.

A true Open Source SaaS

“True” Open Source means thinking differently about business. In Open Source ecosystems, companies collaborate on building the best possible software while competing to sell projects, for example.

I am excited about toujou because it is based on a professional, Open Source content management system (my favorite one), but even more so because it delivers on the most important promise (and premise) of Open Source: freedom. SaaS, Software-as-a-Service, offerings typically fit the textbook definition of closed-source, proprietary software. They offer no freedom, no access to the code, much less the ability to modify or pass it on to others. 

If you ever outgrow toujou’s offering, on the other hand, you are free to take your TYPO3 website with you when you leave.

Collaboration and enablement

toujou was conceived as an enabler, providing the structures you need to build your website or for others. You bring your ideas, toujou does the technical heavy lifting — installation, maintenance, upgrades, migration, etc. And far from competing with agencies, toujou is helping them excel and provide great service and great TYPO3 experiences for their clients.

For my part, I think toujou has enormous potential as an Open Source onboarding platform for site owners and their agencies. Furthermore, toujou can provide an Open Source platform for older FOSS-based websites, stopping the move to closed source and proprietary platforms.

What’s in it for me? 

With toujou’s wholehearted embrace of Open Source and the fact that you can take your TYPO3 instance with you when you leave the SaaS platform makes toujou ideal for three use cases (at least!):

• Startups: Kickstart your website using a professional CMS. Getting a site up and running quickly often comes at the cost of quality and maintainability. toujou handles support and maintenance of your TYPO3 site, and you can involve an external agency whenever that makes sense for you.
• Agencies: Create quality client sites, even for smaller new customers. TYPO3 CMS is known for its performance and scalability. Starting on toujou offers the possibility of almost limitless growth for your sites over time, within or without the SaaS.
• Legacy sites and agency customers: When you can’t, or don’t want to, upgrade your current CMS, migrate your site to toujou! You benefit from ongoing upgrades and support, and can continue your relationship with your agency partner as needed.

toujou: changing the world, one site at a time

My goal in my new role is to replace old-fashioned sales clichés and out-of-date ideas about technology with upbeat stories about how Open Source can change the world for the better. If you’re not convinced, I bet there’s more you didn’t know about Open Source — and I want the chance to convince you otherwise :-).

Invite me to tell you more or help motivate your team, and get a free demo of a genuine Open Source website SaaS for you and potential clients.