Hello David, We all have our view of the world.
I am a volunteer in the Apache Software Foundation as all of us are. I signed the ICLA https://www.apache.org/licenses/icla.pdf """ 6. You are not expected to provide support for Your Contributions,except to the extent You desire to provide support. You may providesupport for free, for a fee, or not at all. Unless required byapplicable law or agreed to in writing, You provide YourContributions on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONSOF ANY KIND, either express or implied, including, withoutlimitation, any warranties or conditions of TITLE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, MERCHANTABILITY, or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. """ Free Software / Open source IMO does not mean costs or free work done by others. I can speak on my behalf, others might have different reasons for contributing: - I contribute because I like building software. - I contribute to Open Source as a way of giving back for the software I use to support myself. - Open Source comes with no guarantees, just like some commercial software does. Don't like it? Don't use it. - The community is a volunteer one and people have a life other than fixing bugs for someone else for free. This might sound a bit rude but so is the entitlement of saying: I have a bug, fix it for me for free in X days. - If you want support, contract a company or a person to help you out. I won't stop anyone in offering free support or free services for the software. If you like to do it, it's fine; I will cheer for you, I might help from time to time, but I personally can't commit to offering support for free. I believe payed support is a very good thing and it's the job of companies. The community should do it's best to help out when it can we can't offer any guarantees as a community. Let's say we do adopt a "We'll fix a bug in 4 weeks or less policy". How would you enforce this in a community of volunteers? The model doesn't make quite make sense IMO. This email is my own opinions that may or may not be shared by others. They don't seem to be shared by you. I do not oppose us offering free support, but I will not commit to it either. I do support having a page of companies offering payed support for Apache James. Regards, Eugen La 15.06.2020 14:10, David Leangen a scris: > 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 > > -- Eugen Stan +40720 898 747 / netdava.com
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