Value Proposition

We want businesses and careers built around Magento Open Source to prosper.

Magento Open Source is a mature eCommerce platform, with more than 300,000 developers and thousands of businesses worldwide depending on it.

Adobe is focused on large enterprise projects, and because of that doesn’t give many resources to supporting Magento Open Source. Moreover, Adobe is actively harming Magento Open Source businesses with false or misleading claims like “Magento is now Adobe Commerce”.

We are ensuring a bright future for Magento by enabling the development community to enhance the platform, providing merchants and agencies the long-term reliability they require, and giving newcomers an easy entry into the platform.

Mage-OS is an eCommerce platform, evolved from Magento Open Source. It can be used to build online stores, in the same way that Magento Open Source can be used.

However, because Mage-OS is focused on improving the components that make up the platform, we envision it becoming a foundation that many purpose-built variations of eCommerce systems can be built on. For example, we envision a minimal system optimized for a low resource consumption, or a system optimized for headless store fronts, or for modern server side rendered stores, or an e-procurement system, etc.

We are also driving the ecosystem by providing content for merchants and agencies to gather first hand information about the platform. This will include comparisons to other platforms, showcases, FAQs, directories, and more.

Finally, Mage-OS will focus on local representation at Magento specific events and eCommerce events at large, to engage with businesses and developers in person.

In the short term, Mage-OS is the same but different. Mage-OS is available for your use if and when you want it.

Our initial focus is on significant performance and usability improvements. We will be integrating changes that have been suggested as Pull Requests to Magento Open Source by the community, but haven’t been included by Adobe due to lack of resources for Magento Open Source.

Over time, those bug fixes and improvements will become an increasingly large advantage for Mage-OS over Magento.

Magento is a very stable and feature rich eCommerce platform with a huge amount of integrations with third party services and a rich developer community. Mage-OS is and will remain intercompatible with Magento solutions and integrations, and provides further enhancements on top.

We are working on a detailed comparison of Magento to other platforms.

Mage-OS benefits from having evolved out of Magento Open Source. It offers:

  • A mature and stable platform with a huge amount of existing third party integrations.
  • Ownership of the platform by being able to become a member of the Mage-OS Association.
  • Unparalleled flexibility and customizability.
  • A large global community of developers, agencies, and support.

Mage-OS is owned and organized by the nonprofit Mage-OS Association.

Most financing is through membership fees from businesses and individuals.

The membership fees for individual members will be affordable for someone working with Magento on a regular basis, regardless of their location.

Companies can become partners at multiple levels (bronze, silver, gold) for higher amounts, to contribute to the ongoing development of the platform.

Interested in becoming a member or partner? See More Details

Contributing to Mage-OS financially is directly funding the development and longevity of this platform and ecosystem.

The Mage-OS Association is not-for-profit, and will be investing the vast majority of funds directly into staffing, operations, and development of Mage-OS. Financing Mage-OS is about innovating and sustaining an awesome platform into something we can continue to rely on for the next decade or more.

By supporting Mage-OS, you will get a membership badge showing your membership level, and a listing in our membership directory, which is open to all visitors of the Mage-OS website. Show your support, and others interested in Mage-OS will be able to find you in the process.

  • Direct influence and ownership of the platform by becoming a member of the Mage-OS Association.
  • A stable and mature eCommerce platform, evolved out of Magento Open Source which is backed by a large corporation.
  • Participation in the vibrant global Magento community.

Vision and Sustainability

Our vision for Mage-OS is to provide a high-quality, dependable, and better alternative to the Adobe-curated Magento Open Source project. We will demonstrate an ability to process contributions quickly and effectively, improve the quality and accessibility of the platform, and release updates on a regular cadence that users can plan around.

We expect these actions to have a meaningful improvement on the quality of life for all people in the ecosystem, which will in turn encourage growth and engagement among the community.

As of October 2023, Mage-OS initiatives include:

The Mage-OS Distribution is open for contributions and pull requests today, at github.com/mage-os/mageos-magento2.

To date we have been focused on building the infrastructure to create independent releases.

In the immediate future, our focus is on improving the platform stability and performance, reducing total cost of ownership, and reducing dependencies between modules to allow sites to remove features they don’t need.

Platform enhancements beyond that will come down to what the ecosystem takes on and contributes.

In the long term, we intend to enhance Mage-OS capabilities to remain competitive against other modern ecommerce platforms.

You can use Mage-OS today! See Mage-OS Distribution for instructions.

If or when Adobe stops supporting and maintaining Magento Open Source, Mage-OS will be well positioned to step into its place. This is an important aspect of Mage-OS: to provide certainty and a long-term plan for the ecosystem, regardless of factors outside our control.

If at some point Magento Open Source becomes unsupported, we will start considering larger changes to improve the platform, with less emphasis on preserving upstream compatibility with Magento Open Source.

In the meantime, we will make every effort to preserve compatibility with Magento Open Source, while at the same time improving performance and adding new features.

This is necessary to preserve ease of use, familiarity, and compatibility for everyone (including vendors, extensions, and developers).

We will follow an approach inspired by the Typo3 Association, which founded a limited company (Typo3 GmbH) which is owned 100% by the Typo3 association. The company provides services supporting the ecosystem, such as LTS, SLAs, certification, but does not compete with the members of the community. This means that the company will not implement Mage-OS projects nor do body leasing.

This model of a community owned commercial entity will provide the vendor based support and financial backing required for the long term success of businesses of all sizes built around Mage-OS.

We’re really into this Mage-OS thing. Also, we’re not going to do it alone! We will be hiring full-time paid staff and opening a Mage-OS development grant program as soon as circumstances allow us to do so.

No. We can’t guarantee future improvements or features won’t step into the territory of existing solutions, but our intention is to support the ecosystem, not undermine it.

Mage-OS and the Mage-OS Association will not be providing any conventional merchant services. Any requests we receive for development, integration, site builds, audits, etc. will be referred to the Mage-OS supporters list.

Finances

At this time, Mage-OS is fully funded by membership fees and donations from our members and partner companies. All payments occur and are visible through our Open Collective organization at opencollective.com/mage-os.

Currently the entire Mage-OS board of directors and committees are working on a volunteer basis. Everything you see so far was done by passionate people that believe we can create something special.

The Mage-OS Association is not-for-profit, and will be investing funds as productively as possible into the Mage-OS platform. Specifically:

  • Operational expenses: Accountant, lawyer, bank fees, website, software and licenses
  • Staffing: As of spring 2024, Mage-OS has one paid staff, a part-time chief of staff to organize contributors and efforts.
  • Development: As funds allow, Mage-OS will pay for development of important features and initiatives to support the innovation and growth of the ecosystem. We intend for this to be the vast majority of spending.

As a legally registered Poland association, we are bound by our statutes, which include multiple approvals for all spending; audits by our Business Control Committee; and an annual budget and financials approved by the members (which could mean you).

To assist our Treasurer in managing expenses and taxes, we work with a globally reputable accounting firm, HLB. Together they provide monthly and annual financial statements, which are reviewed by our board and our Business Control Committee for correctness and relevance to our mission.

Each year, the Business Control Committee will publish a report on the finance audit for the General Assembly.

In the interest of fairness, we have a policy to only accept financial contributions for partner status. We welcome all contributions and will absolutely give credit where it is due, but keep those separate from the Mage-OS partner program. See our Contributors list, and monthly recap posts.

This policy allows us to treat all contributors and partners fairly and equally, without having to assign a monetary or relative value to each contribution.

No. We do not accept contributions for sponsored content in any form. If you have an article or initiative you’d like to publish or push through Mage-OS, get in touch! But all content we publish or amplify must be generally targeted for the Mage-OS or Magento ecosystem at large, and not for the purpose of highlighting or selling any specific third party solutions.

The trust of our community is of the utmost importance to us, and we believe that accepting sponsored content would do permanent harm to that trust.

No. We do not sell information about our users, members, or partners. We also will not sell the ability to contact them through our network (for instance through paid mailings). See ‘sponsored content’ above.

Yes! Maybe. If you would like to see a feature or capability added to the platform, and are willing to put funds toward its development, talk to us about running it through the Mage-OS grant program. We’re open to ideas.

All grants will be subject to applicability to the broad community; feasibility of completing the feature in reasonable cost and timeline; and availability of people able to complete the necessary work.

Stay tuned! Our grant program is still in early stages, and we’re figuring out the best process and policies to open it up widely.

Community

Mage-OS and the Magento Association both deal with the Magento ecosystem and community, but they are focused on different things.

Magento Association is focused on supporting and maintaining the Magento community through events, content, outreach, and similar programs, but they have little involvement in the development of Magento Open Source itself. One of the main purposes of the Magento Association is to represent the Magento brand, and to communicate with the Magento brand owner, Adobe.

The Mage-OS Association on the other hand is more technology-focused. We support the ecosystem by publishing an improved but compatible distribution of Magento. We are focused on growing independently of Adobe.

We look forward to collaborating with the Magento Association in the future, as we both share the same fundamental purpose of growing and supporting the Magento Open Source ecosystem.

We have an immense amount of respect for the people that built Magento and maintain it to this day. That said, we fundamentally disagree with the direction Adobe is taking the platform (as detailed in our open letter 14 Sept 2021: mage-os.org/blog/the-future-of-magento). In order to take the steps we see as necessary for Magento to thrive among the latest eCommerce competitors, we need control and nimbleness that is not possible in the Adobe-controlled Magento Open Source project.

For this reason, we made the difficult decision to create our own fork and distribution based on the Magento open source code. The Magento name and logo are trademarks we can’t use, so we are calling this new product Mage-OS, and the organization behind it is the Mage-OS Association.

Splitting the ecosystem is the last thing we want to do.

Mage-OS was created to revitalize and sustain the community of developers, agencies, merchants, and partners that built their business around Magento. The best way for us to do that is to stay compatible with Magento Open Source and Adobe Commerce to the greatest extent possible, for as long as we can.

  • Extensions that work with Magento will work with Mage-OS.
  • Extensions that work with Mage-OS will work with Magento (unless they are based on Mage-OS specific features).
  • Code samples and syntax for Magento will work for Mage-OS too.
  • Anyone that learns or knows Magento or Mage-OS should be able to switch to the other with minimal effort or confusion.

Mage-OS will make improvements and fixes to the core for Mage-OS Distribution, but those fixes will not break or fundamentally change the nature of Magento. It’s still going to be the same architecture, with the same incredible customizability. If we do this right, it’ll just be easier and nicer to work with.

No. Mage-OS was started by a group of companies that happened to be located mostly in Europe, but we are actively growing our member base all over the world.

For more information, please refer to our blog post on Diversity and Inclusion that focuses among other things on geographic representation.

Any people with a business that relies on Magento have a vested interest in Magento’s success. Because of that, they (and we) are committed to improve the ecosystem, and to ensure it lives long and prospers. That applies to everyone involved with Mage-OS, including the association’s board of directors.

There is a long history of ‘cooperative competition’ in the Magento ecosystem. This is based on the belief that “if the cake gets bigger, we all win”.

The Mage-OS Association’s statutes (rules of operation) have specific requirements for avoiding direct conflicts of interest while acting for Mage-OS, which all board members must abide by.

Mage-OS will not offer training as long as there are businesses in the Magento ecosystem that do so. There are many excellent resources to learn Magento as a merchant, a solution architect, or a developer.

We do not have concrete plans to offer our own certification, but it is something that might happen in the future if it serves the community.

At this time we don’t have concrete plans to organize a Mage-OS conference, because we are focused on other things, but it sure has come up already in discussions, so who knows – it might happen!

That said, members are organizing Mage-OS meetups and participate and speak at other events, including Meet-Commerce and Unconferences. If you are interested in representing Mage-OS at a conference you are planning to attend, that is great! Please let us know on Discord!

Once a year all members are invited to the General Assembly of the Mage-OS Association, an online event. The General Assembly governs the Mage-OS Association according to the association statutes.

Usage

Yes! You will just need to make some changes to your composer.json file and then update. The Mage-OS mirror is compatible with all your existing Magento code, but please test compilation and general site functionality before moving to Mage-OS on a live site.

Yes! You will just need to make some changes to your composer.json file and then update. You will lose any Mage-OS specific enhancements in the process, but if you change your mind, you can switch back just as easily.

Yes. It is very similar to moving from Magento Open Source to Adobe Commerce. You’ll lose any Mage-OS specific features in the process, but both are based on the same Magento core, so all of your data will stay intact.

Yes. You’ll lose any Adobe Commerce specific features in the process, but both are based on the same Magento core, so all of your data will stay intact. The process is very similar to moving from Adobe Commerce to Magento Open Source, so it is possible, but it does require some work.

Magento is traditionally installed using the composer command
composer create-project –repository-url=https://repo.magento.com magento/project-community-edition

To install Magento from a public mirror, change repo.magento.com to mirror.mage-os.org:
composer create-project –repository-url=https://mirror.mage-os.org magento/project-community-edition

To install Mage-OS, change the repository URL and project code:
composer create-project –repository-url=https://repo.mage-os.org mage-os/project-community-edition

We also have development repositories available for testing purposes:

  • mirror.mage-os.org provides any Magento Open Source version since 2.3.7-p3
  • upstream-nightly.mage-os.org provides the nightly builds based on the current develop branches.
  • nightly.mage-os.org has Mage-OS Distribution nightly development builds.

Contribution

  • Join us in Discord at chat.mage-os.org and let us know how you’re interested in helping!

Our current main work streams are around

  1. The Mage-OS product
  2. Visibility and understanding of the Mage-OS initiative and brand (Marketing and Communication)
  3. Content development around Mage-OS (features, showcases, comparisons, and more)
  • Become a member or partner of Mage-OS to support Mage-OS financially. This will allow us to hire full-time staff to further Mage-OS, provide additional resources, and start a grant program for development of the Mage-OS Distribution.

You can contribute financially or through volunteer work. By contributing to Mage-OS, you’re directly supporting development of the Mage-OS and Magento ecosystem. You can directly influence the direction of the platform and help to keep it modern and relevant.

Today! Please see our Contribution Guide, and open pull requests at github.com/mage-os/mageos-magento2.

In time we will accept contributions of any nature, but to start we are particularly interested in backwards compatible changes:

  • Bug fixes
  • Improvements to the developer experience
  • Performance improvements
  • Improvements to maintainability, for example cleaning up the package dependency graph. (mostly backwards compatible)
  • Independent modules which enhance or add functionality

Yes! Please join and participate. If you just want to listen, that is fine, too – just let us know when you join.

Meetings happen in Discord, in the video/audio channel “Public Meeting Room”, at:

  • Monday at 4PM CET: Marketing meeting
  • Monday at 4:30PM CET: Content meeting
  • Tuesday at 3PM CET: Tech meeting

Convert to your timezone

Technology

Mage-OS is only focused on Magento 2, particularly the supported release line (2.4). For Magento 1, we’d encourage you to look at OpenMage LTS.

Currently the Mage-OS Mirror repository provides all versions of Magento 2 since 2.3.7-p3.

The Mage-OS Distribution will be based on the latest Magento Open Source version.

We’ve had many informal discussions with Adobe about how to merge Mage-OS PRs into Magento Open Source. The most likely process will be that Magento will cherry-pick commits they are interested in.

Regarding divergence: Our goal is to maintain backwards compatibility for as long as possible, but yes, Mage-OS and Magento will diverge over time.

For new features we will likely follow an approach of delivering these as separate packages.
We have three stated technical improvement goals for MageOS currently:

  • Fix the package Graph and use a Graph build to improve the time it takes to run tests.
  • Avoid breaking changes.
  • Make it easier to get started as a junior developer. This means making a package that “just works” on a WAMP/MAMP/LAMP environment. This is important to keep the influx of new developers into the ecosystem alive.

There are other ideas that come from this (like delivering different metapackages other than project-community-edition).

Regarding new features: We plan to take an approach similar to Adobe, by implementing new features as new packages, rather than directly in the core. This allows for an independent release schedule of features, as well as making it easier to keep upstream compatibility with Magento Open Source intact.

So new features = new modules, but improvements to the core that are backwards compatible can go into the Mage-OS core.

Yes, add-on modules are the plan for enhancements and additions to the platform. This has numerous advantages, including easier maintenance, separate release schedules, and keeping the main repository closer to the upstream Magento core.

Only slightly. Please see Mage-OS Distribution for more details.

Miscellaneous

We are aware of the close connection between the Hyvä company and Mage-OS and would like to take the opportunity to be transparent about the situation, and highlight actions we are eager to take to diffuse any impression that one party has too much influence over the Mage-OS initiative.

Hyvä is a front end framework for Magento, which means it is very reliant on the stability and longevity of Open Source. The Open Letter was initiated by many passionate and active members of the Magento Community, including the founder of Hyvä.

Vinai Kopp (CTO at Hyvä) was voted President by the Mage-OS founding Board of Directors. He is leading the technical efforts of Mage-OS, and engaging the Community in the weekly tech meetings as well as Magento meet ups and events. In his own time he also dedicates a lot of his architecture and coding mastery to enrich the Mage-OS product infrastructure.

Vice President Thien-Lan Weber is now also a Hyvä employee, but was CMO at OneStepCheckout at the time she joined the Mage-OS Board. She continues to defend interests of Magento Extension providers who also heavily rely on the eCommerce Platform. She helps build the brand awareness and comprehension of the Mage-OS project by contributing to content and marketing efforts. She is a strong advocate for diversity and inclusion.

One rule we set for the Mage-OS Association Board at the outset was to avoid two people from the same company sitting on the Board of Directors. This will be a consideration when the elections to nominate the new Board of Directors comes up in 2024.

In addition to contributing with employees’ work hours, the Hyvä company has also provided brand assets design (logo, visual identity), and funded marketing material such as button badges and roll up banners.

All that being said, the board of Mage-OS is interested to minimize dependance on Hyvä and actively reach out to more companies who heavily rely on the success and strength of the Magento Open Source platform, including frontends such as Vue Storefront, Breeze, Front Commerce, GraphCommerce, Daffodil, and others. We invite you all to reach out and join us. Diversity of perspectives and tech stacks can only make our codebase better, more extensible, more relevant, and more useful for our end users: eCommerce merchants.

We also would like to draw more attention to how much sweat and contribution are provided by companies other than Hyvä, including Agencies, Extension Vendors, Solution Providers, and Freelancers in the Magento ecosystem. Our Contributors Page is dedicated to thank those companies and individuals and give them the recognition they deserve.

Please reach out at chat.mage-os.org, or Contact Us.