Hello.

In "Drupal commerce" module's bug system, it is stated

With the Commerce Q&A system on DrupalCommerce.org, we are no longer answering support requests in the issue queue.

Support requests opened here will be closed (won't fix), so please search for existing answers or post new support requests at:

http://www.drupalcommerce.org/questions

and this is what Commerceguys effectively does. Is it acceptable according to Drupal.org's policy that the creators of a module redirect compulsorily all support questions towards their own website? This is an unfriendly way to capture Drupal.org visitors.

Comments

Jaypan’s picture

Drush has done this as well, and I fully disagree with their decision. There is no way to police it (as they are within their rights to provide support anywhere they want), but it is definitely anti-community, and this action should be frowned upon.

John_B’s picture

Who knows why they did this. The majority of the questions on the Commerce Guys website do not get answered. Maybe because they are selling support, and are in effect using it to assist with moving towards a model used by some Wordpress devs, who offer free support, or if *really* want an answer you can pay. I speculate.

It is against what we used to think of as Drupal culture, but Drupal culture is changing and becoming more enterprisey. When you see, according to Dries's blog, that Acquia, who generously support Drupal development more than anyone else, has accepted investment from Amazon (whose bookselling arm are notorious for aggressive treatment of staff, malodorous tax-avoidance, and draconian abuse of contractual power with customers, e.g. by wiping your Kindle library remotely if Amazon in their absolute discretion suspect you of breach of contract), you know that the motivations of Drupal community are becoming more commercial and less socially aware. Commerce Guys have contributed a lot, and why should they not take steps to monetize support?

Is this a bad thing? I do not know. Drupal is still a friendly place. Microsoft is big business. Linux is big business these days. So is Wordpress. And so is Drupal, let's face it. Open source does not imply free support. The old days of social values (still strong in CiviCRM community), are not gone entirely from Drupal, though they are on the wane. You can use the code for free. If you want support for OS software, it is arguably normal to expect to pay for it.

Digit Professionals specialising in Drupal, WordPress & CiviCRM support for publishers in non-profit and related sectors

bojanz’s picture

I'm a Commerce Guy and Drupal Commerce co-maintainer and I can tell you that there is no commercial reason behind this decision.

See my blog post: http://bojanz.wordpress.com/2013/06/21/stop-using-issue-queues-for-support/ for why we/I believe that issue queues are a terrible place for support.

The level of activity on the DrupalCommerce Q&A is indeed low, due to low community participation.
And it is up to the community to provide most support, since it would take me and Ryan all of our time (currently split on bug fixes, maintaining dozens of contrib modules, writing Commerce 2.x) to answer each support request.

John_B’s picture

It is obviously not reasonable to expect Commerce Guys to be a free support desk. I had already seen the post and tend to agree. Besides you can't do everything - I do support but I contribute no code. However my impression is that by saying support has moved off d.o
that reduces the chance of random questions getting answers from random community members. The real solution is to use (and improve) these forums. I know we have an odd situation where many well-informed people are going to satackoverflow or irc for support while newbies come here

There is some goodwill towards improving d.o. forums
Just seems hard to make progress.

Digit Professionals specialising in Drupal, WordPress & CiviCRM support for publishers in non-profit and related sectors

Fiable.biz’s picture

I didn't ask or expect Commerce guys to provide free support, but just to let people who wish to provide free support on Drupal.org doing so.

http://Fiable.biz Web site creation.