The software is provided free of charge. Personalised support and custom development for it is not.
Please note that some repositories are marked as "INTERNAL" or "NO SUPPORT" in their README.md. No support at all will be provided for these repositories including but not limited to bug reports, feature requests, paid support and paid custom development. The status of these repositories as internal / no support overrides and supersedes everything else described in this document. In an attempt to avoid confusion we try to make GitHub Issues inaccessible to the public on such repositories where support is unavailable.
On all other repositories we will be happy to discuss bug reports and feature requests free of charge and only through GitHub issues in the relevant repository as long as the conditions outlined in this document are met.
Please remember that we only provide limited free of charge support for bug reports and feature requests in the context of furthering the interests of the target audience of our software in general, not just specific individuals. Think of it as tending to the community garden everyone can use and enjoy, not fencing parts of it off so that only specific people are allowed to use it.
First and foremost, be respectful. All interactions with community members, contributors and maintainers are subject to the Code of Conduct.
Kindly note that the word “Free” in the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) designation of the software refers to freedom of choice, not lack of cost, as explained by the Free Software Foundation itself. If you don't understand why that link is important: it's by the same people who wrote the GNU General Public License our software is licensed under and who founded the Free Software movement itself.
Using our free of charge, FOSS software does not create any kind of business or other relationship between us, does not grant you any privileges and does not mean that we are obliged to offer any service level whatsoever free of charge.
You are free to choose whether you want to use our FOSS software and the resources we make available to you free of charge. You are also free to choose whether to use the limited free of charge support we offer or not. You are, however, not entitled to any privileges or special treatment just by merit of using our software.
Bug reports are only considered for free of charge resolution by the maintainers when the issue is reproducible given your instructions on a site and hosting different than yours.
If your issue can only be reproduced on your site and / or hosting please try to isolate what is causing the problem and give us more accurate instructions which helps us reproduce the issue. Only then can we investigate whether it's a legitimate bug with our software or a problem with your site or hosting environment.
If your issue does not meet this reproducibility criteria, if it's unrelated to our software or is something already documented we will probably close your GitHub issue without further commentary.
We will be happy to discuss and consider feature requests with a justified reasoning behind them. At the very least we expect you to tell us what is the problem you are trying to solve, which alternatives you have considered and why you believe that your proposal is a good fit for our community in general (i.e. show us that you are not assuming that you are fully representing the entire community).
Please do keep in mind that your requested feature change or addition is something which has to be developed, supported, maintained and defended by the maintainers of the project in perpetuity. As a result only feature changes or additions which make sense for the overall community will be considered. Moreover, the decision on whether a feature will be implemented at all, when it will happen and how it will happen lies exclusively with the maintainers and no promises are made on a timeframe.
We encourage you to read our documentation Wiki and try to figure out a solution to your issue yourself. Our software is typically reasonably simple to use. Whenever there are tricky conditions such as the need to configure a third party service for use with our software or the need to do template overrides or other Joomla or hosting specific configuration to use our software we do document it.
If you are unable to find a solution just by using the documentation we encourage you to seek peer support in the Joomla Forum or your local Joomla User Group, either in person or through their Facebook page / local forum. The chances are someone else has either run into the same issue or understands how to fix it.
If you still cannot find a solution to your issue or do not have time to go through the free-of-charge, community-driven support outlined above you can always hire the maintainers to provide you with personalised support for a very reasonable fee.
If you submit a bug report or other issue that is not a legitimate bug report per the criteria outlined above the maintainers will remind you of this policy and let you decide whether you want to close your issue or continue with paid support.
We encourage you to first discuss a feature you'd like to see implemented with the maintainers. The maintainers will tell you if this is a feature that is a good fit with for the overall community or not. If it's a good fit you will be told if there is a timeframe for its development or whether no committment can be made at that time.
It is understood that in some cases you desperately need a feature to be implemented that the maintainers have rejected o told you it may be considered for a future version without a time committment. In these cases you generally have three choices:
- You can wait for the maintainers to implement this feature (obviously only applies to features not rejected outright).
- You can implement it yourself e.g. by hiring a third party developer.
- You can hire a maintainer to implement it for you for a reasonable fee.
In the latter case, if it's a feature we told you we are not interested in or find to be not a good fit for the community we would create a custom version of the software for you, with that feature implemented. However, there are no guarantees that this version can or will be maintained. This kind of work would have to be paid extra.
If you hire us to accelerate the development of a feature we said we would consider without committing to a timeframe you understand that the feature will be part of our software and evenrually made available to other users of the software.
We are not obliged to accept any request for paid support or development. Our acceptance is subject to avaialbility and our assessment of the objective feasibility and legality of what is being asked.
Please bear in mind that the maintainers will not reject bug reports or feature requests just so that you can spend money with us. If your starting position is one of mistrust towards us please do not submit a GitHub issue to save both of us a lot of time and frustration.
Paid services do come with an invoice, no matter if you are a business or a natural person. We do not accept cash “donations” or other non-monetary “gifts” in exchange for services.