I am moving a comment from Benoit to this new thread: > Also I would like to differentiate the terms "offering" (what do we > deliver as part of the James project, who do it targets, and how easy > should it be to use) from the term "support" which in my view implies > "how fast you solve my problems", and might be a more sensible topic.
My thought is: if it is not “supported”, then it should not be “offered” in the first place. By “support”, I mean: * It is documented so Operators understand what they are operating * It works as documented * If it doesn’t work, there is some commitment by the community to fix it If there is no intention of doing all of the above, then it is not “supported” and should therefore not be “offered”. No confusion. Nobody will be let down. I think what you are describing refers to the "service level", which also ought to be described in order to set some kind of expectation. (People only get disappointed when their expectations are not met.) Because this is an open source project, it should be very relaxed (i.e. low expectations set, but at least some expectation). Perhaps we could also maintain a list of those who can provide commercial support if a higher service level is desired. However, people should not feel like they are being tricked or forced into commercial support. Some OSS projects have a “f**k you, this is open source so do it yourself or pay me!” attitude. I don’t think that is very nice and I don’t particularly like those projects. I believe that there should be some reasonable (on both sides) expectations. I believe that a community looks out for its members, and if we want to expand the community, we have to, at least to some extent, look out for those we are asking to join. But that’s just me, and it’s not for me to decide. :-) For instance: * The community commits to fixing a bug within X time X could either be vague (like “a reasonable amount of time given that we are all volunteers"), or something more concrete but plenty generous like “we strive to fix all issues within 4 weeks” (still just a small opening with the “we strive to” part). Then people can compare the James OSS service level to a commercial service level (which we should require if it is to put added to the list, like) "Issues fixed within 48 hours”. Or something like that. It would then be easy for people to make a decision: * Wait up to 4 weeks, but get free help, or * Pay ¥50,000 and get my problem fixed in 48 hours Cheers, =David
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