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.
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.
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June 26th, 2006 
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[...] Maybe I’m fretting for naught [...]
[...] Toni announced yesterday the launch of the Automattic Support Network. This has of course attracted the attention of many blogs who have discussed the business implications but Peter wonders if WordPress.org support will suffer. Here’s another post on the same issue but Matt replies with an excellent rebuttal. [...]
[...] The WordPress paid support option has generated a small buzz. Want to clear one thing up: When I wrote about it last night, I was certainly not trying to imply that this was a bad thing or evil. I simply have, as a support volunteer, some concerns. [...]
[...] It’s not like any of the hackers spend any time on the support forums anyway (they’d rather mess with code than interact with lowly users) so Handy’s worries on that point are probably moot. His concerns that Podz won’t have as much time to spend on the forum probably aren’t, but the nature of volunteer projects is such that there will always be others to step up and fill the gap. [...]
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?
[...] The whole thing was a bit ironic because I found the link to the seller on the wordpress news site right after I read some worried post about the new Automattic paid support. Now let’s just wait and see when the first paid WP plugin will come out Name / Èìå * [...]