Re: SLA Information

[Martin D Kealey]

This has come to the bash-bug volunteers mailing list.

Many of us, myself included, offer software consulting services, and would
happily provide the support you seek, but it would be helpful if you could
clarify the type of support that you're looking for:
(a) bug fixes for bash itself, or
(b) support for your developers writing bash scripts.

That said, Bash has been effectively tested in the real world for over 30
years, so the practical value of paying for category (a) support is
questionable: it's faster and cheaper just to adjust your scripts to work
around any bugs, and fixes to bugs bring a risk of inducing failures
elsewhere.

In my experience bugs in Bash scripts outnumber bugs in Bash by at least
1000 to 1, and likely much higher, as the *majority* of scripts visible on
the internet have latent bugs detectable through automated analysis, and
sampling indicates that most of the rest also have bugs. Only a small
fraction are robustly written.

Most claims about Bash turn out to be bugs in the scripts, and even in
those that correctly identify the behaviour of Bash, at least half are
where Bash is behaving *correctly*, in accord with the POSIX standard for
the Shell language.

Sadly most script writers have not even read Bash's own documentation, much
less read and understood the POSIX standard.

-Martin

On Sat, 19 Aug 2023, 04:27 Malena Arduino via Bug reports for the GNU
Bourne Again SHell, <bug-bash@gnu.org> wrote:

> To whom it may concern,
>
> I am working on creating an SLA for my company and was hoping to gain some
> clarity on your support for GNU Bash. If you could please provide me
> insight on the following items:
>
> - Support Type (what type of support is offered? General? Sales?
> Technical?)
> - Contact Format (how should someone contact [name]? Phone? Live Chat?
> Email?)
> - Hours of Operation (what days and hours do you provide support? EX:
> 8:00-16:00 (PDT/PST))
> - Response Time (for each contact format, what is the expected response
> time)
> - Support Engagement (who is authorized to contact support? or who has
> access to support?)
>
> I am creating a table with this information. Below I showcase an example:
>
> | Vendor Name | Contact Page | Support Type | Contact Format | Contact |
> Availability | Response Time | Support Engagement |
>
> I look forward to your response. Thank you in advance.
>
> Best,
> Malena
>