08 August 2007 - 13:20Per Incident Support for OpenLDAP
Covalent, the company offering commercial support for Apache Web Server and other open source software announced that they are offering per-incident support for OpenLDAP. Symas has offered per-incident support for OpenLDAP for several years. We welcome additional support providers and appreciate the validation of the potential value of support like ours to the end user community.
One of the great advantages of open source software is that users get a broader choice of technical support providers. While there are many support providers for proprietary (closed-source) software products, only the commercial developer can correct defects in the source code. With Open Source, any qualified programmer can make corrections in the source code. Covalent certainly has qualified programmers.
Most technical support calls do not result in the reporting of new defects. The vast majority require explanation of how to use specific features or how to interpret messages from the software. Symas teaches courses in its LDAP University™ program to teach user or provider technical support people how to deal with that kind of problem. That is a valuable service and one at which many may excel.
When the code is broken, though, you need to be working with a team that can fix the problem in the code and then propagate the fix into the project's library. We are confident Covalent has people capable of doing that but are unaware of any of their team actively working with the source code at present. It will be interesting to see how this service offering evolves, therefore. We expect they will rely on the existing contributing community members, of which Symas is among the leaders.
Bottom line? If you need per-incident support, contact us.
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