[rt-announce] Commercial support contracts for RT now available

[Jesse Vincent]

  I'm proud to announce the availability of commercial support
contracts for RT. Starting in 2002, my company, Best Practical Solutions, 
LLC will begin providing support for RT, both on a contract basis and a
per-incident basis.

  By making commercial-grade support available to customers who
have a business need for a highly scalable supported ticketing system,
Best Practical will be able to help make sure that RT continues to be
developed and made freely available to the public.  And, of course,
I'll be able to afford to eat.

  Annual contracts start at $500 per month for a base level support
agreement which makes sense for smaller organizations and scale up to
$10,000 per month for the largest organizations which require 24/7 pager
access to a an engineer from Best Practical. 

  Buying a support contract is the best way to show your support for RT 
and to help make sure that RT continues to be the best open-source 
ticketing system available. If you're interested in further details 
about support contracts, please don't hesitate to contact us at 
sales at bestpractical.com.


  Thanks, 

  Jesse Vincent 
  President 
  Best Practical Solutions, LLC



Questions

Q: Will RT still be free?

A: Of course! Best Practical Solutions believes strongly in freely
available software and in the free software community. RT will continue to
be freely available to the general public under the terms of the GNU GPL.


Q: What about proprietary extensions?

A: While some customers have indicated that they'd be willing to pay
for proprietary "add-ons" to RT, it is our belief that a support-based
business model is best for us and for the community.  While we may not
provide support for all RT-related software, we believe that making
extensions to RT freely available to all users will benefit us far more
than making a few dollars by selling them.


Q: What about free support on the mailing lists?

A: rt-users and rt-devel will continue to exist in their current forms
(though the lists will move to bestpractical.com soon).  Jesse won't
stop answering questions on the list; however, by not allocating large
portions of his time to providing free (and often redundant) support,
he is able to better put his time to use on other projects, including
working on future versions of RT.


Q: What else can we expect from Best Practical?

A:  There are a couple exciting new projects brewing at Best Practical
Solutions that should be quite exciting when they're unveiled in 2002.
You can catch a glimpse of the first, a documentation management system
called RT/FM, in action at http://fsck.com/rtfm/index.html where it's
serving up the evolving documentation for RT itself.


Q: How do I get a support contract?

A: Send email to sales at bestpractical.com and we can get back to you with
a rate sheet and more details.


Q: Does Best Practical do custom development work?

A: Certainly. We specialize in RT-related work but take on other
interesting projects from time to time.  If you send mail to
sales at bestpractical.com describing your requirements, we can work with
you to put together a quote and go forward from there.


--
http://www.bestpractical.com/rt/             Best Practical Solutions, LLC