Software support levels: Extensions, plugins, and modules

My team here at Joinery provides a wide variety of customized functionality through CiviCRM extensions, WordPress plugins, Drupal modules, and the like.

Wherever these are available to the public (typically under an Open Source license), there will usually come a time, sooner or later, when someone wants an improvement to that software: bug fixes, feature improvements, and such.

Each of these software packages will be supported under one of the following support levels. Typically you’ll find the relevant support level indicated the README file contained in each package.

In general

This is software that’s provided for free to the community. I hope you understand that my commitment to my existing clients — in terms of availability, approving new features, and response times — will always come first.
I’m open to providing fee-based support for any need you may have related to these packages; if you have a need for something specific, please reach out.

Support levels

Active Support

If a package is marked for “Active Support,” that means I like it and think others in the community like it, too. I hope it will continue to be used by lots of people.

Therefore: I aim to keep the package in good working order, and will do my best to respond appropriately to issues reported in its public issue queue. This includes issues such as:

Ensuring compatibility with the latest CiviCRM/WordPress/Drupal security release version.
Ensuring compatibility with the latest versions of other popular extensions/plugins/modules.
Fixing bugs in existing features.
Merging well-written code contributions that reasonably improve the package.
Providing guidance on usage.

Limited Support

If a package is marked for “Limited Support,” that means I like it, but haven’t seen much adoption among other users. I’d like to see it grow, but it’s hard to justify spending lots of time on it.

Therefore: I’ll try to respond to issues reported in the package’s public issue queue. I’m probably going to help with the following kinds of things, if it’s easy for me.

Ensuring compatibility with the latest CiviCRM/WordPress/Drupal security release version.
Fixing bugs in existing features.
Merging well-written code contributions that reasonably improve the package.
Providing guidance on usage.

If an issue isn’t pretty easy for me to fix, I’ll probably suggest some ways you (or a developer you know) could fix it yourself; and I’m pretty likely to accept that fix as a code contribution (assuming that’s easy for me to do).

As-Is Support

If a package is marked for “As-Is Support,” that means I probably created this package for some very specific use case, either for my own use here at Joinery, or for a client, and I don’t think it will be much use to others. I hope you’ll find it useful, and I’m grateful for any code contribution you want to share as an improvement, but really, I haven’t budgetted any time toward supporting this package.