enterprise-ubuntu team mailing list archive

[Ezio de Mauro <ezio.demauro@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Disclaimer: I work for Canonical and I'm providing answers just because 
Canonical was invoked :)

> I hope the Canonical guys in this group would correct me if I am wrong,
> but I think that it is not that plain to say what is "supported" and
> what is not. They need to provide "best-effort" support for other stuff
> as well.

I wish there was a simple answer to such a simple question :)

As a guideline, Canonical supports packages which were compiled and 
tested by Canonical and for which there it the full "engineering chain" 
backing the package life cycle. This is roughly equivalent to the Main 
software repository ("Main" as opposed to "Universe").

The rationale behind this guideline is that, if Canonical has compiled 
the package, tested the package and has software engineers specialised 
in that domain, then Canonical can help if there is a software defect or 
in case of questions in general, within the agreed deadlines.

Support is generally not possible for a package when:

* the package is not open source, since having access to the code is 
often essential to find and fix bugs

* the package was not compiled nor tested by Canonical, since it might 
simply not integrate well with Ubuntu

* the package is not the responsibility of someone in Canonical, since 
it wouldn't be possible to promise a response within a certain timeframe

In all cases, Canonical tries to see if there is anything that can be 
done, no promises made though. For example, for a proprietary NVidia 
driver problem, Canonical can try to get in touch with the makers of 
that drivers. Or for a package in Universe, Canonical can try to 
facilitate the communication with the maintainer.

Incidentally, this is generally accepted as "best effort" in the IT 
world, although "best effort" can have an entirely different legal 
meaning: http://itlaw.wikia.com/wiki/Best_efforts_clause

[...]

> The case of using MS Office on our Ubuntu machines was discussed in
> Tieto. We discussed the option of using Crossover by buying their
> support subscription or by using an unsupported Wine wrapper. Crossover
> was too expensive, the nightmare of supporting people with Office
> application crashing ourselves was not compelling either.

Depending on the needs, it might be entirely possible that a cloud-based 
solution is ideal in this case. Something like Office 365, which 
requires only a browser and means zero hassle on the client side.

It could even be feasible/desirable  for the Windows machines in the estate.

[...]

> Personally I would love to see contract's price tags, but I don't think
> this would ever happen on a wiki.

Prices are here: https://shop.canonical.com/index.php?cPath=41

A brief service description is here: 
http://www.canonical.com/enterprise-services/ubuntu-advantage/support

I hope this helps,

ezio