Solo Technology

Saw an announcment today for the “Automattic Support Network.” From that post:

It’s an enterprise support subscription service designed for companies who would like to deploy WordPress or WordPress MU and purchase professional support to back up their deployment.

[Automattic Support page]

I’ve mentioned once or thrice that I volunteer at the WordPress support forums. Out of tolerance, they even let me be a moderator (feeds my power hungry personality I suppose). I think the software is generally first class as are the helpers (and most of the users!). Have to be honest here and confess I’m struggling a bit with this announcement though.

Part of me is very happy for Matt and the boys — this could be a great way for them to recoup and gain from all of the hard work they and other contributors have put into the product. And hell, if MySQL can do it, why can’t AutoMattic? Giving away the software and offering paid support seems to be a reasonable approach. And to get “free” software into large corporations, sometimes you just have to prove that you can get support for it. And that’s best done with a support contract.

On the other hand… it can be tough to get truly technical help in the support forums. The developers don’t hang out there at all. To be fair, just last week I posted a plea for help to their hackers mailing list and some came running. But getting and keeping their attention when they could be off doing paid support? Might be a challenge, eh?

Or maybe I’m fretting for naught. But if we lose more of Podz’s time in WP.org support, that’ll sure be a bummer. Guess we’ll have to see where this all goes.

6 Responses to “WordPress Paid Support”

1. » pingback » Wordpress And Automattic: A Sinister Pair by Elliott Back on June 26th, 2006 7:08 pm
   
   
2. » pingback » Holy Shmoly! :: Corporate WordPress support is evil? on June 27th, 2006 2:11 am
   
   
3. » pingback » Solo Technology » Blog Archive » Small Followup on WP Paid Support on June 27th, 2006 4:52 am
   
   
4. » pingback » wordpress™ wank » so big business doesn’t trust the forums. quelle surprise on June 27th, 2006 8:46 am
   
   
5. riva on June 27th, 2006 10:38 pm
   

   I’ve noticed that WordPress sites on the hosted service have recently been acting buggy; there are many posts in the support forum about improper comment counts, for instance. I like WordPress and thought Automattic was generous, but will their free blogging service fall into neglect now?

6. » pingback » weboholic » Blog Archive » paid WP themes … paid WP support … paid WP plugins on July 5th, 2006 10:20 am
   
   

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