Running it reliably.
WHAT DIFFERS FROM COMMERCIAL SOFTWARE
No vendor obligation to help No guaranteed response Support depends on you or on paid third parties
WHAT TO ESTABLISH BEFORE DEPLOYING ANYTHING IMPORTANT
Who fixes it when it breaks Whether that person exists in your organisation Whether commercial support is available
WHY
Discovering you have nobody during an outage is the wrong moment.
WHAT OPTIONS EXIST
Internal capability Commercial support from a vendor supporting the project A consultant or contractor Community support
WHAT COMMUNITY SUPPORT PROVIDES
Answers, eventually, from people with no obligation.
WHAT IT DOES NOT PROVIDE
A response time.
WHAT TO ESTABLISH
Whether that is acceptable for the system in question.
WHAT COMMERCIAL SUPPORT PROVIDES
Defined response, and someone accountable.
WHAT TO ASSESS
Whether the cost is justified by the criticality.
WHAT TO ESTABLISH INTERNALLY
That someone understands the component well enough to diagnose problems.
WHY
Dependencies nobody understands are dependencies nobody can fix.
WHAT TO DOCUMENT
How it is configured Why it was configured that way Any modifications made How to recover it
WHY MODIFICATIONS SPECIFICALLY
They are lost on upgrade and they are forgotten.
WHAT TO ESTABLISH ABOUT MODIFICATIONS
Whether they are necessary, and whether they could be contributed upstream.
WHY UPSTREAM
Maintained modifications become someone else's responsibility.
WHAT TO TRACK
Versions in use Update status Known issues affecting you
WHAT TO PLAN FOR
A project becoming unmaintained.
